Run
by thedreamerswin
Summary: A reimagining of Mark and Lexie. obviously AU, and no, they don't die
1. Instead of in New York

Taking one last look around her, she took a shaky breath as she dropped her keys onto the table in the hall before stepping outside. Repositioning her bag over her shoulder, she gets into the cab waiting out front. Giving directions to the cab driver she leans back and watches the city skyline; tears fall down her face. This is really it. This is the end.

She gets on a plane an hour later.

"Each of you comes here today hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors." The words of the Chief of Surgery Richard Webber trail off and Lexie finds herself in awe of the operating room around her. All she had essentially done for the last 20 years is study to become a doctor, and now she had the white lab coat and the scrubs.

"This is your arena. How well you play? That's up to you." He concludes and Lexie follows as they move towards the locker room to being their first shifts. 48 hours. For the next 48 hours she's officially a doctor, a surgeon.

"So who do you have?" A scrawny brunette guy asks her while she turns her phone off. Interns cannot have their phones on the floor, and Lexie does not want to keep hitting ignore on the call she has gotten every few hours for the last month. Once she actually gets a look at the scrawny brunette guy her mind jumps to realize that she has seen him before. Last year. When she did the visit day. Lexie hadn't told… _him_... where she'd gone during the time she did the visit. Carried it off as needing a break from everyone during her mother's funeral. By then her father had started drinking and she had wondered if she would need to do her intern year at home.

"A… Doctor Yang." Lexie doesn't want to let him know that she recognizes him from the conversation they had in the locker room during the hospital tour. "I'm Lexie, Lexie Grey."

She sticks her hand out and he takes it, shaking it. "George O'Malley. You're not related to -" He trails off and Lexie groans inwardly.

Growing up all she had wanted was an older sister. When she'd found about the older sister she had fought with her parents for years about the fact they refused to introduce her. "Yeah I am. She's my sister, we've actually never met."

"Grey, O'Malley, Halley, Nowland!" A voice cuts through their conversation as all of a sudden the interns move rapidly towards the nurses station. By now Lexie and the other interns have started running after their resident.

Yang gives some speech about how the interns have five rules to follow at all times. While she knows she should pay better attention she hopes that her memory will recall any of the useful information she needs later. Out of the corner of her eye she catches someone. Seattle Grace had posted all of their residents' information online a few weeks ago, Lexie had scoured looking for any information she could find on her half-sister. The blonde hair she saw out of the corner of her eye, that's Meredith. That's the sister she wanted.

All of a sudden Dr. Yang barks orders at them and Lexie finds herself standing in the ambulance bay.

Meredith.

This is Lexie's chance to meet her.

As Meredith goes through with the patient, Lexie interjects herself.

"I'm Lexie." Her whole body freezes with a fear the usually confident intern has.

Meredith's eyes roll as she tries to get the gurney into the hospital "Great now move!" she yells.

"Lexie Grey. I'm your half sister." Lexie stammers through her sentence and watches as Meredith pushes the gurney through.

With a sign Lexie moves around to follow her resident. "We've got a dead guy over here!" Lexie realizes that she may have one of the more cutthroat residents. Lexie almosts expects her to flip the gurney over and move on. Suddenly the man on the gurney takes a deep breath and everything moves in rapid succession.

"Somebody page Derek Shepherd right freakin' now" Cristina screams and Lexie stills for a moment. _Derek_. Her mind knows that she's probably one of the few interns that actually knows what Derek looks like, but she's not going to volunteer that information right away. "3, go get Dr. Shepherd."

Trying her best not to groan Lexie goes into the hallway and takes a look around as she walks to the nurses station. Derek's talking to Meredith. "Great. Just great." she mutters to herself having a feeling that this conversation will not go as she planned.

"Dr. Shepherd," she interrupts her voice coming out a lot more timidly than she means for it to. Derek's head whips around quickly, his face registering confusion.

Meredith's jaw drops. "You two know each other?" Her eyebrows go up as she speaks, and Lexie's mind goes blank while she tries to think of any excuse possible.

Thankfully, Derek comes in with the save "I met her at Joe's yesterday." There's something in Derek's voice that tells Lexie there's a lot more going on here than she cares to know. In that moment she realizes that Meredith must be the woman Derek had started a relationship with after Addison. Nancy's voice calling her the slutty intern rings through Lexie's mind.

Rolling her eyes Meredith lets out an "Unbelievable," before she storms off towards her trauma room.

Clearing her throat Lexie takes a look up at Derek. "Doctor Shepherd you're needed in Trauma Room 3," she speaks carefully and hopes that Derek will just head into the trauma room without any questions.

Of course, she doesn't have that kind of luck. "Does he know you're here?" He fires back as they begin walking towards the trauma room.

Sighing, she tries to avoid the heavier implications of that sentence. Lexie had run, she'd taken off without much hesitation, with not enough planning, of course, she ended up in the same hospital as Derek Shepherd.

Shaking her head no, Lexie speaks measuredly. "You're needed in Trauma Room 3." She hopes in repetition she will find a way out of this conversation.

Not new to Lexie's tactic of avoidance Derek speaks again. "I'm going to guess based off the phone calls I've gotten in the last month, Mark has no idea that you're here. I would bet Mark doesn't even have a guess as to where you are. You know why I would bet that Doctor Grey?" He's stopped them outside the trauma room, trapping her into the conversation.

With a gulp, she can feel her heart racing and the pit in her stomach growing. All she had done since she returned home from her mother's funeral is run, and her mind wanted to run far away right now. "Why Doctor Shepherd?" She asks knowing the answer.

"I know why" He starts backing into the door to lead his way into the trauma room "Because your husband has called me every day for the last two months panicking that you're lying dead in a ditch or have gotten into an accident. Now you've got until I finish this exam to come up with a reason I shouldn't call your husband, my best friend, and tell him I found you."

"Only 36 hours to go." Lexie grumbles following her way into the room.


	2. Falling or Flying

AN: Hi guys! Thanks for the great responses on the last chapter. The first few chapters will be building up the plot. So if there are a few holes in it don't worry I'll tie everything up. Also sorry if I'm skipping over some of the medical stuff or it's wrong - I majored in history anything I find and write medically is from google.

Derek's threat ends up getting delayed a few hours as they get pulled into surgery to repair the guy's neck. Lexie's relieved for the extra time to figure out how to explain, but she still struggles to come up with any logical sounding way to explain what she did. How she just left her husband in the middle of the afternoon with only a note and her keys on the table.

14 hours into her first shift. 34 to go.

Taking a seat in Derek's office she knows he will find her in a matter of minutes. Only a few minutes ago he'd ordered her to wait for while he finished updating the family. Part of her wonders if he had gone ahead and called Mark, given him the time to get on a plane and get here before she had the chance to even explain.

The door flings open as Derek walks in. "Do you want to explain?" He pointedly asks as he takes a seat across from her.

"Hi Lexie it's great to see you. Wow it's been such a long time since I also moved across the country from my spouse and didn't tell my spouse where I was going. I'm sure you also had a reason for doing so. How are you doing with all that?" Lexie rambles. God, she does not want to have to explain to her essentially brother-in-law why she left Mark at a moment's notice.

Lowering his gaze Derek to meet her eyes he looks Lexie in the eyes before cutting her off.

"Lexie." he sighs before speaking. "Two months ago - I get a call from Mark. Where he tells me you've left. At first I'm confused, you left the house all the time I don't know why he's so upset about it."

While Derek speaks Lexie shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She doesn't want to explain her reasoning to him and she's honestly not sure it will make sense. As he explains his phone call from Mark, Lexie can practically picture her husband and suddenly the conversations feels a lot harder than it had an hour ago.

"Then, once I finally get Mark to calm down and start speaking coherently and explain what's happening, he tells me. He tells me that you've left your keys on the table and a note telling him not to look for you and that you won't be back, he can wait for divorce papers. By this point Mark has grown nearly inconsolable on the phone, to the point I actually debate flying out there." At this Lexie visibly shutters. Derek doesn't take that as a reason to stop though, and continues onward.

"I caution him to wait a week. I tell him that maybe you'll come home and you just panicked. A week goes by. Two weeks. A month. Every few days I'm expecting to get a phone call from Mark telling me I need to come out there because he's lost you in some way. I know that he calls your phone, I called your phone, hell I think even Addison called your phone, trying to get you to answer to convince Mark you're not dea-" and that's the moment Lexie loses it.

"STOP!" she screams taking a step out of her chair she yells to make him stop.

Tears form in the corner of her eyes as she takes a steadying breath before speaking. Giving herself a moment she wipes the tears out of the corners of her eyes. Calming herself she turns back to Derek. "Do you think I don't know what I did? I'm perfectly aware of the fact I left my husband and flew across the country while he was at work and haven't answered the phone." This is the first time that she's come close to even vocalizing what happened. Her own father had been too drunk to ask any questions other than if she could go get scotch.

With another deep breath she slowly begins to speak "I know I have a lot more to explain, but he hadn't spoken to me in months. I lost my mom. We lost -" she hesitates on her next words as she tries to decide how much she wanted to share. "He shut down. I stopped seeing him. I couldn't tell you the last time my husband and I had an actual conversation, if he wasn't Mark I would have assumed he'd met someone else."

Now she's getting angry thinking about their last few months together. "I know I haven't been a picnic to deal with over the last year, but, he's supposed to be my husband and he just gave up. So yes, I took off. I was _suffocating_ there in that apartment." Lexie tries to keep her voice measured and calm, keeping her emotions in check but she knows that she's failing rapidly.

"I don't want you to tell him where I am. He's a grown man and while it takes two to get to where we are, he gave up. At the end of the day, he hasn't found me or even tried to look in Seattle." Her hands go from gesticulating wildly to reaching to fidget with her rings only to remember she had taken them off once she'd landed in Seattle.

"You can tell him or not tell him. It's your decision," Lexie takes a step towards the door and she forces out the last little bit. Desperately, she tries to hold on to her nerves before she loses it in his office. "But at the end of the day, there's a reason I didn't tell him and why I'm going by Grey and not telling anyone else I'm married." As she steps out of his office she hears the door shut behind her. Not quite sure where she's headed, she wanders until she finds herself in the locker room.

In a snap second decision Lexie decides to open her locker and turn on her cell phone. Checking her watch, she's probably about five minutes from Mark's final phone call before he heads to bed for evening. Over the weeks he'd taken to a similar pattern of calling her, tending to call within the same 15 to 20 minute ranges each day. Sometimes they shifted slightly, she took it to mean that he had surgery, but he never called after midnight or before 8. The same hours she had slept consistently unless she had an early class.

The phone rings in her lap.

Without thinking Lexie opens the phone. For her - this is new territory, she had never answered these calls before.

"Lexie?" Mark's voice does not hide his surprise at her answering

Instead of responding she chooses to stay silent.

Hearing him sigh on the other line she breathes in, making the slightest of noises. "Lex please come home. I'm sorry we can figure it out just please come home or tell me where you are I can come there please just -" the door to the locker room opens and Lexie slams her phone shut. Powering the phone down she tosses it in her locker and wipes at her eyes. Even though Lexie thinks she's made the right decision she still misses him. After years of seeing him every day, she had given up on her marriage.

At that moment her pager goes off and Lexie sprints to the pit.

By the time she gets there the ambulance has arrived. Tying the gown she tries to follow her resident. "Male 33, head on vehicular collision on the freeway. Shortness of breath on the right hand side," the paramedic reads off the stats and Lexie feels herself shift back in to doctor mode.

Meanwhile across the hospital in his office, Derek's phone rings. With the time that has passed and Lexie storming out of his office, he's got a guess as to who will be on the other side.

Opening the phone he answers after glancing at the caller id "Hey Mark."

"Derek she answered. She didn't say anything but she answered. I'm worried that she's hurt or something because she just hung up, but she answered." Mark's words seem victorious but his tone come across as desperate. The tone of his friend on the other line is hard to listen to, he knows that Mark has become desperate to try and find his wife. Suddenly Derek understands he has to make a snap decision.

Mark or Lexie.

His best friend since elementary school or the girl he considered another little sister.

Part of him knew he should just come out and tell the Mark everything he knew, he can't help but to sympathize with Lexie's actions. The year before he'd done the exact same thing.

With a sigh Derek wishes he could calm his friend down. While it would only take a few words for Derek to give away Lexie's location, he can't betray her trust. "I'm sure she's okay. She's married to you I'm sure she can handle a lot." The joke falls flat as Mark doesn't laugh. "She answered. That's good. You're getting somewhere," Derek encourages.

The two of them fall into easy conversation. Over the last two months these conversations have grown routine for the two of them. It kills Derek, knowing that he could end Mark's suffering, but Derek can only hope that Mark would keep calling and looking for Lexie, and that Mark wouldn't be too pissed when he realized Derek knew where she had run to.

AN: Thanks for reading! I'll try to have more posted later today! Tell me what you thought please!


	3. Hello Again

AN: Wow a third chapter so fast how wild! Now that we've set the stage a little things will start picking up. Don't worry. Also for all intents and purposes in this storyline, episode 2.18 never happened, and Addison didn't sleep with Mark she slept with someone else.

For the last month Lexie had done nothing but work at the hospital and try to settle in. Her father barely noticed her unless he needed scotch or a ride home from the bar. Mark hadn't stopped calling, she hadn't answered again but sometimes he left voicemails.

" _Lex - I know that I screwed up but I miss you. Please come home or just tell me where you are. We can get through this."_ Lexie listens to her husband's voicemail and she gets ready for her shift.

"On the phone with your secret boyfriend?" A voice asks behind her. George. They'd become some sort of friend-like in the past month.

Laughing awkwardly Lexie turns around to face George. "Secret boyfriend? With what time?" She asks. With the brutal hours and the lack of time interns had to spend outside the hospital during regular hours she hadn't really had the chance to meet anyone outside the hospital. Her social circle here consisted of sometimes getting drinks with the other interns in her class, and all of twice having her sister ask her about sitting with her at Joe's. Sure, Lexie figured that the only reason Meredith had asked her was because Lexie seemed to know Derek, but at this point she took whatever she could get. She actually couldn't imagine having the time to date right now.

Shrugging George slides on his lab coat. "You're pretty secretive with your phone. Not to mention every single time we've gone to get drinks your phone rings, you take a glance at it, hit end and move on." His face says that he's not buying whatever lie Lexie spins here.

Carefully hedging what she can say with only a few minutes before rounds she hesitates before speaking. "Do you want to get a drink after our shifts? Or lunch? I can explain then." She promises hoping that she'll have a way to bring up her whole secret husband thing.

Moving to get their assignments, Lexie half expects another day of being barked at by Cristina. Even though she felt like she might have made some strides with her older sister, Dr. Yang was still a whole other ball game. "Grey, go with big Grey you're on a special case today with a visiting surgeon. Go find her." With a shooing motion Lexie's off to go find Meredith.

Finally finding her by the surgical nurses' station, Lexie walks up to stand by her. "Dr. Yang sent me to find you, apparently I'm working with you today. Who's the surgeon?" she asks taking a glance at the chart Meredith offered up.

Lexie starts reading the chart right away:

 _18 year old male. Facial tumors beginning at age of 7, continuing to grow. Pressing on the orbital nerve. Tumors also found in brain. Not shrunken by radiation. In for neurosurgical and plastics procedures._

Meredith shrugs. "Some hot shot from New York. Dr. Shepherd is the neurosurgeon on the case, I don't remember the name of the plastic surgeon off the top of my head."

Lexie continues reading the chart while Meredith babbles on about something before finally getting to her point. "So anyways if you wanted to come to Joe's tonight when you're done, me and some of the residents are coming, and you and George are pretty much the only interns anyone likes." It's an olive branch but Lexie will take it.

Smiling she looks at the other surgeon "Yeah that'd be great, I can meet you there when I'll all done here tonight."

Following Meredith with the chart in her hand, Lexie looks over to where Derek's talking to someone. From behind she can only catch a his graying hair and the leather jacket. Part of her knows that he looks familiar but cannot place where she knows him from. "That must be the other surgeon." Lexie points out.

What Lexie doesn't notice while she's trying to place the back of the head she's approaching is Derek gesturing to move before the surgeon he's talking to turns around. In the split second before she looks at his face, she realizes why she knows the back of the head, and the leather jacket. Lexie bought that jacket. Three years ago she bought her husband that jacket for Christmas.

Lexie stops in her tracks and Meredith turns her head to look at her. "Lexie? What's wrong with you?" Meredith asks looking at Lexie like she's grown a second head.

Before Lexie can say anything Mark smirks right at her. If Lexie hadn't been so shocked to see her husband standing there she would have noticed Meredith looking confused beside her and Derek's hands running over his face.

The two stare at each other for a moment. Neither one speaking.

After a moment, before either one has the opportunity to speak Derek decides to butt in. "Doctor Grey why don't you go get the latest scans for me." He means Meredith so that they can leave Mark and Lexie alone, but Lexie takes it to mean her.

"Right, I'll uhm, I'll go pick those up right now Doctor Shepherd." Lexie hands the chart off to Derek and all but runs away. When she's out of earshot Meredith turns to face the two surgeons. Mark's eyes stay stuck to where Lexie had just scurried down the hallway.

Looking exasperatedly at the two doctors, Meredith struggles to figure out what she just witnessed. "What the hell was that?" Before her question can get an answer, Mark mumbles some sort of an apology before taking off after Lexie.

Looking back to Derek confusedly, Meredith waits for some sort of explanation as to what she just witnessed. "Well?" She prods hoping for any type of information from the dark-haired doctor.

"Come with me," He quietly says pulling her into an empty exam room. As much as he'd love to just explain, he doesn't want to blatantly broadcast his best friend's information across the hospital. If he shared the information would spread before Mark had even managed to find Lexie.

Following him into the room she shuts the door.

"When Mark and I were in our first year of our residency, we'd been interns for maybe two months, we went to a bar by Columbia. In med school it'd been one of our favorites and we had something to celebrate that night. I don't remember what, some surgery we'd scrubbed in on together." Derek starts and Meredith just get confused. "Anyways, at some point during the evening Addison showed up and I went off with her, and Mark met Lexie. Looking back she'd clearly used a fake, but when I left Mark they were sitting and talking and he was laughing like I'd never seen him laugh before."

Derek pauses learly remembering something that happened years ago. "By the end of that month, Mark and Lexie were dating, and when she graduated from undergrad they got married. Her last name is Sloan, they've been married for five years, I was the best man at their wedding." He hesitates on the end before continuing. "Over three months ago I get a phone call from Mark telling me that Lexie had taken off and he didn't know why. I didn't hear anything other than weekly panicking calls from Mark that something had happened to her until she showed up here."

A small noise falling from her mouth as she processes, Meredith opens her mouth a few times before finally gathering the ability to speak. "Was there a reason that she left? Was he abusive or something?" Meredith asks trying to process that the younger sister she had just grown to almost like had a hotshot surgeon husband.

Shaking his head Derek shrugs. "I have no idea what happened. I've gotten some bits of information from Mark and Lexie, but I really just don't know. I guess they just… fell apart." At this moment Derek understood Mark's heartbreak over this, he and Meredith weren't together anymore, but he would give anything to put them back together.

"It happens sometimes, people can love each other and it cannot work. Page me when we're rounding on the patient. I'm going to go find my sister." Meredith says pulling the door open and heading into the hallway.

AN: And that's a wrap on chapter 3. Mark finally found Lexie. Don't worry we'll get to their first interaction soon. Thanks to all who have reviewed, and please review at the end of this chapter.


	4. Push

Lexie knows that most up to date labs are in the chart, but she's taken Derek asking as a reprieve from the conversation with her husband. Ducking into an on-call room she shuts the door behind her. Letting out a breath her reprieve lasts only a moment before the door opens to reveal her husband.

Taking a step inside, Mark shuts the door behind him. "Come on you're not even a little bit excited to see me?" He asks looking right at her for the first time.

Clearing her throat and crossing her arms over her chest Lexie looks right at him. "Go home Mark. Do your surgery and go home." She speaks softly, but firmly. She doesn't know if he's legitimately here for the surgery or if he's just here for her, but either way she wants him to leave.

Careful not to spook her and make her run out of the room Mark chooses his next words precisely. "I miss you everyday. I've missed you everyday since you left the note on the kitchen table." His voice has a tone of desperation she'd previously noted in his voicemails. Still though, it does not send her running back into his arms without hesitation, she stays firmly planted in her spot, arms crossed.

As Lexie saw it, she had two options. She could lie and say she hadn't missed him at all. Which even though she had made the decision to leave him she still missed him. She also could tell him that she did miss him, but at this moment she didn't think the fact she missed him could change anything. Not satisfied with either option she just stays silent, hoping that Mark will take the hint and leave.

"I know that you're pissed at me. I know that the months before you left weren't the easiest and I could have done a better job of being a husband. I know all that, but I love you. I love you and I miss you. Please come home." Mark pleads and it takes everything in her to not start sobbing right there.

With a shake of her head, Lexie fights back tears. "No. I'm sorry I need to - I need to go check on my patients." She says softly. Finding a gap between Mark and the door she slides out of the room.

The door barely shuts behind her when Lexie feels her control start to slip. Wiping at her eyes she tries to keep herself under control while she walks away from the room.

A small hand lays itself on her arm. "Not here." The voice says and carefully guides her into the stairwell. By now Lexie has barely processed that it's Meredith who's pulled her out of the hallway. Shakily she drops to sit on the stairs and just lets it go. Meredith doesn't say anything, she just runs a hand over her arm while Lexie cries.

Across the hospital Mark storms in to Derek's office. "Did you know she was here?" He asks his best friend.

Derek jumps at the loud entrance of the plastic surgeon. "Yes, I saw her on her first day." Obviously Derek had known she was here the entire time, and he knew that lying to Mark was futile. In the end the truth would come out and Derek did not want to lie about what he knew.

Flabbergasted it took everything Mark had to not scream at Derek. "Did you not think about calling me? Even to tell me that you knew she was okay? For months I've called you and panicked over not knowing where my wife went and she's been here the whole time!" Mark's far from a violent man but right now he wants to just throw things.

"It wasn't my place. Believe me I thought about telling you. I told her to call you, to even just text you, but it wasn't my place." Derek pleaded with his best friend.

Part of Derek completely understands where Mark's coming from, but he knows that he couldn't have done this for the couple. The two of them had to deal with this in their own time in their own way.

"I just…" Mark drops down on the couch and puts his head in his hands. "I came home and she was gone." He sounds like a man at the end of his rope, trying desperately to just keep it together.

Sighing, Derek leans on his desk and looks at Mark. "So you know where she is now. She's clearly decided that she's going to stay. Maybe it's time for Seattle Grace to finally get a new head of plastic surgery." He suggests knowing full well that Richard needed someone to take over after the last head had retired last year.

A broken sound that Derek assumes is supposed to be a laugh comes out of Mark. "I don't even know where my wife lives. We're married and I have no idea of my wife's current home address, I didn't even know she was going by Grey until you said her name. Is she - Is she" Mark stumbles over the question he wants to ask but doesn't want to know the answer to.

Derek shakes his head. "She works a lot, she's arguably the best intern of her class, sometimes she gets drinks with a guy intern in her class but he's dating a resident. She's started spending some time with Meredith recently, but no she's not dating." The breath Mark didn't realize he'd been holding whooshes out of him with relief.

"So what do I do next?" Mark asks.

"With one failed marriage and the status of Meredith's and my relationship I don't really think that I'm the guy to be doling out relationship advice." Derek starts and they both genuinely laugh at that. "First, what I would probably recommend doing is operating on our patient, then you should probably go talk to the chief and see about a job, then I would probably find a place to live here and see if you can win your wife back."

"One step at a time. I can do this. I can save my marriage." Mark says standing up. "One step at a time." He repeats to himself.


	5. High and Dry

Once Lexie's calmed herself down enough to speak, Meredith finally asks the first of many questions on her mind. Of all the current interns, she never would have pegged Lexie for the type to be married and on her way to a divorce.

"So you're married? To the hotshot plastics surgeon?" She asks, genuinely curious how these two ended up together.

A small wry smile developing on her face Lexie begins to explain. "I met him my freshman year at Columbia…"

-Flashback-

 _Between the music playing too loudly, the overwhelming amount of people in the bar, and her roommate having gone off with her flavor of the week Lexie just wanted to go home. She knew freshmen were supposed to find going out the most exciting thing in the world, but Lexie kept coming out with her roommate only to go home alone._

 _Making her way to the bar she tries to decide if she should get another drink. Especially while using a fake ID Lexie wanted to avoid getting belligerently drunk in the bar._

" _Your friend also run off to be with the 'love of their life'?" A voice behind her asks. She turns around to see a tall man standing behind her, he's hot, and even with the greying hair she can still tell he's young._

 _Chuckling she can't help but check him out. "You're close. Roommate, and flavor of the week to be exact. I was just trying to decide if I should head home or get another drink." She's leaving the door open for him to convince her to stay._

" _Well, how about you let me buy you a drink and you can make the decision on if staying is worth it or not." He offers leaning onto the bar._

 _Suddenly not hating the idea of getting to know this stranger she agrees easily to stay. Nodding she watches him replace both of their drinks. "So stranger man, usually when I let a guy buy me a drink I like to know his name." She takes a sip of the drink and looks up expectantly at him._

" _Mark. Mark Sloan. I'm a surgical intern at Mt. Sinai. You are?" Earlier when Addison had showed up and Derek had done his usual growing encapsulated with her Mark had gotten bored._

 _Sticking her hand out she shook his offered hand. "Lexie Grey. I'm uh, a freshman at Columbia. I'm pre-med." Lexie worried the second she gave up her age that he would turn around and walk away. Generously they had eight or nine years between them._

" _A freshman huh? So needless to say you're definitely not 21." He jokes as he leads them over to a table where they can sit and talk better._

 _With a laugh she follows him. "I'm only 18, and my lovely roommate dragged me out. So, surgical intern Mark, tell me about yourself."_

 _In the corner table the two spend the night talking. For the first time Lexie doesn't spend the night out staring at the clock trying to figure out when she can leave. The people Mark and Lexie originally came in with leave, and the two just keep talking. In the end they close down the bar, having stayed sitting there just getting to know each other the whole night._

-End Flashback-

"By the end of the month we were spending more nights together than apart, really the only nights we were apart were the nights he had to stay at the hospital and even then I would go sleep at his apartment so I could see him in the brief time where we would overlap." A small smile develops on her face at the memory of meeting her husband.

Wiping off the end of the tears that had fallen while she told the story, Lexie rubs her hands together. Despite the fact she'd taken the rings off months ago, Lexie still sometimes reached down to fidget with the rings. Instead her hand moved to where the rings hung on the chain around her neck. Without legally separating Lexie felt uncomfortable taking her rings off.

"He proposed after I took my finals junior year. I'd been stressed and exhausted and he just. He told me I was all he wanted for the rest of forever," Lexie starts as she looks over at Meredith.

-Flashback-

 _Lexie hadn't slept in days. Despite her photographic memory she wanted to really know everything before she went into her exams. She'd taken the MCAT two weeks before and then launched right into finals._

" _Hey babe," Mark said walking into his apartment. While she technically had her own place, he often wondered what the point of her having her own place was. She spent most nights here, her clothes filled the closet and half of the drawer._

 _Taking a look around his girlfriend, he saw notecards and textbooks sprawled everywhere. In all honesty he wasn't sure if she'd even noticed him come in. "Babe?" He asked moving closer to the area she'd sprawled out in. No answer. "Lexie" he tries again._

" _Lexie!" He yells a little louder. Finally her head snaps up._

 _Her eyes look confused as she tries to process why he's there. "You're home? It's the middle of the afternoon what are you doing here?" She asks taking a glance around to see what time it is._

 _He'd seen this with her before, she would get so focused she'd forget what day it was and would refuse to lift her head out of her textbooks. "Lex it's like nine p.m., have you done anything today but study?" He asks wondering if she'd actually eaten today. He'd gone in to the hospital after dinner last night, and he wasn't sure that she'd moved since he left._

" _I have learned the majority of the information for my humanities final." Lexie said gesturing around her._

" _Lex, you know everything. You've got this." He says gently knowing that it'll be hard to coax her out of what she's doing._

 _Her face crumples in disagreement. "I really want to know this. It's not my field, I want to be really sure." Lexie says flipping through her notecards again._

 _Placing his hand on the notecards in her hands, he gently lowers them. "You got a perfect score on the midterm, you've got a photographic memory, you know this. You've become a crazy person, can I get Lexie back?" He asks gently looking her in the eyes._

 _She looks contemplatively at the cards and at her boyfriend. "You think I've got this?" She asks timidly._

 _Mark can't help but laugh at this. "I know you've got this. Come on, let's get some dinner and you some sleep." He pulls her up gently._

 _Lexie's arms go around his waist. "I love you so much. I don't know what I'd do without you." She leans up and presses a kiss to his lips._

 _Suddenly Mark thinks about the box in his coat pocket. He'd bought it two weeks ago, and suddenly right now seems like the perfect moment. Taking a step away from his girlfriend he reaches into his coat pocket on the sofa, ignoring her sound of protest as he moves away._

 _Opening the box he drops to one knee. A small gasp falls from Lexie's mouth. "Mark what-" she starts but he cuts her off._

" _I could say any number of things to you. I love you. I love you and even though today you were acting like a crazy person, I don't want anything else in my life. I just want you, every morning, every day, every night. Lexie, will you marry me?" He asks looking up at her with a smile on his face._

" _Yes! Of ." She can feel tears prickling at the corner of her eyes as he slides the ring on to her finger. Pulling him up she kisses him. "We're getting married." She all but squeals._

-End Flashback-

"So then what happened Lexie? You married him, and then you just left?" Meredith asks looking at the younger surgeon. For the girl she'd joked had parents that cared and smiley face posters on the walls, Meredith really didn't get the turmoil she saw here. For all she could tell Lexie still loved Mark, and Mark clearly still loved her. So why didn't it work?

While Meredith asks about this she couldn't help but think about her and Derek. If Mark and Lexie couldn't make it work, how could Meredith with all her damage expect to make it work?

"When my mom died, we'd had a rough few months already, and I didn't take losing her well. And it's not like the end of med school is a particularly easy time. We just… we fell apart." Lexie knows her explanation is nowhere near enough to explain what happened, but she hopes it's enough.

Before Meredith can press on any further their pagers go off.

"Well I guess it's time to go spend 12 to 15 hours with your husband and my ex-boyfriend in an operating room. Should be a fun time." Meredith says as they head off to find Derek and Mark.

AN: Well that's a big ol' chapter! Hopefully this satisfies some part of who Mark and Lexie are. Obviously, in the show she went to Harvard, but Columbia's still an ivy and it makes it a lot easier to put her close to Mark. Let me know what you think!


	6. How We Operate

AN: So there's some medical stuff in this chapter, and like I said I'm a history major so hang in there if it's not entirely correct. Everything I know comes from Grey's Anatomy or Google.

Scrubbing in Lexie wishes she had some sort of food she could eat right now. She's always been a stress eater and what she would give to have a handful of fries she could shovel into her mouth. Derek and Meredith have already scrubbed in, but she hasn't seen her husband yet.

"Hey Lex," Mark says as he opens the door to the scrub room. Moving next to Lexie, he begins to scrub in. For a few moments it's awkward. Neither one of them says anything as they scrub in. He doesn't know what to say, and she doesn't say anything.

"Thank you for the opportunity to scrub in Doctor Sloan," Lexie says softly, ignoring the look of pain on his face as she addresses him by his title. She doesn't know what to say here, if she should even say anything at all, but she can't go in there with them not speaking like this. She doesn't know how she's supposed to go through this multi-hour procedure with him like this.

Taking a breath as he finishes scrubbing in, Mark takes one look at his wife before they go into the OR. "I'm asking the chief for a position here. I thought you should know. I'm not going anywhere." He says softly as he walks into the operating room. Mark's determined to win his wife back, and that starts by moving here.

"Alright then," Lexie mutters to herself as she follows him out of the scrub room. Gowning and gloving up she stands to the side of Mark. Six months ago she would have given anything to scrub in next to her husband, and now it takes everything she has to not run screaming from the room.

Derek watches as everyone takes their places in the OR, paying more attention to Mark and Lexie than he probably should. "It's a beautiful day to save lives everyone." Derek announces to the OR as he asks for the scalpel.

Except for the amount of tumors on this man's skull, the surgery is fairly routine. As a med student Lexie had watched Mark and Derek perform procedures like this before. She'd spent hours sitting in their living room going over every aspect of surgeries, driving him wild with her questions.

Mark's voice breaks through her reverie. "Doctor, uhm, Grey, would you like to resect this tumor?" He asks stumbling over her name. Derek and Meredith share some sort of look between the two of them as he stumbles, but Lexie takes the opportunity.

Nodding she steps up to the table. "Thank you Doctor Sloan." Lexie takes the scalpel in her hand, carefully going in to take out the tumor.

"Good, now why did you pick that size scalpel?" He asks and she almost chuckles.

"I picked the smaller scalpel to minimize damage to the area's nerves. If you want to keep maximum motility in his face then it makes sense to try and use smaller tools and take a little more time." Lexie repeats back, remembering having asked him the same question before. She knows that he knows why she has this information right at the front of her mind.

Nodding his head in agreement he stands watching. "Good. Now watch the edges on this one, it's pretty jagged." He coaches pointing to the edges. He lets her cut out the next few tumors before taking the scalpel back and beginning the reconstructive work once the area has cleared up.

Taking a step back Lexie watches onward as Mark operates. Sometimes she adds in questions, genuinely curious as to why he's making certain decisions instead of sticking purely to the textbook. The two act in tandem, her assisting in the moments he needs it, and it seems almost like they speak in shorthand. At one point the two seem to entirely miss the look Derek and Meredith give them after they converse about one of the tumors. If Mark and Lexie weren't so broken watching them would be mesmerizing.

"That's a wrap. Excellent work everyone." Mark says some hours later as they finish closing up. The usual bit of applause breaks out in the operating room and Lexie lets out the breath she didn't realize she still held.

"Meredith why don't you and I go update the family?" Derek offers even though he knows that he should probably not leave Mark and Lexie alone together. Selfishly, he wants every ounce of time he can get with Meredith. He's still optimistic that he can figure it out and they can work it out.

The patient gets wheeled back to his room, and Lexie and Mark begin to scrub out. They stand side by side washing their hands before he speaks. "You did a great job, really. I'm not just saying that. You've got an incredible amount of talent, especially when you consider you've only just started." Mark speaks in earnest.

"Thank you, and thank you for giving me so much freedom. I really learned a lot today." Lexie says turning to look at him. "So you're thinking of sticking around?" She asks hesitantly.

"It's not New York, that's to say the least, but it's green and really beautiful here. I think I could grow to like it here." Mark says looking at her.

Nodding her head, Lexie knows why he's really staying. "Mark… please stay because you want to, not because I'm here." She's almost pleading with him.

Crossing his arms over his body Mark looks down at the floor before looking back at her. "I have lived in New York my whole life. I'm designed to hate anywhere that isn't Manhattan." He pauses and looks right at her. "I hate Manhattan right now. I've spent the last three months, completely miserable in a city I used to love. I don't want to be in Manhattan without you there, and if that means I move to Seattle and get to see you, even if we're not together at the moment. I don't want to live in Manhattan without you, and if I even get to see you some days and that means I live in Seattle, then that means I'm moving."

Mark moves to open the door. "I love you, and I'm not going anywhere." He says before taking a step out of the scrub room.

An hour later finds Lexie having completely scrubbed out and changed, and seated at Joe's next to her sister and Meredith's friends.

"So 3, you married a plastic surgeon?" Cristina asks ever lacking normal tact. "Cristina!" Meredith interjects trying to put a stop to Cristina's take on what Meredith had gathered to be a sensitive topic.

Laughing a bit awkwardly, Lexie nods. "It's okay Meredith. I married him about five years ago, in the summer between med school and undergrad." Lexie explains and Cristina seems satisfied with her answers.

At that moment Mark and Derek walk into Joe's and take a seat at the bar. "So you left your steamy husband to come do a residency here?" Cristina jumps back in looking back and forth between the two tables.

"Yep. I left to come do a residency here." Lexie says hoping that the questions will die and she can shift the focus onto something else. She knows she still owes George an explanation and she's sure that when he gets here that he'll ask a million questions.

Meredith takes the chance to interject with something stupid some of the other interns did before Cristina has the chance to say anything else. Lexie silently thanks her and tries to keep her focus on the conversation but she keeps finding herself looking over at where Mark and Derek sit. "I'm gonna go get another drink does anyone want anything?" Lexie asks getting up from the table.

Walking over she positions herself at the corner of the bar, flagging down Joe to order one. "It's all set." Joe says handing her the drink without a check. Lexie doesn't have to ask who took her check, she knows it's Mark. She tilts her head in thanks to him. Down a few seats she watches him raise his glass in acknowledgment. It's an olive branch, but if he's going to stay here and keep working she's going to have to get used to him here.

Walking back to her table, Lexie sets the drink down in front of her and listens to Meredith begin recounting the story of the interns that punched each other in the face today over another intern.

AN: And that's a wrap on chapter 6! A bit more direct interaction between Mark and Lexie. Let me know what you think!


	7. Fools Like Me

AN: Buckle in! This is a long chapter but it's worth it in the end!

Before Lexie's even made it to her locker she's stopped by Cristina. "Grey the Chief wants to see you in his office before you round." Nodding, Lexie changes quickly before changing and heading upstairs to Chief Webber's office.

Patricia waves Lexie right in and she knocks on the door. "You wanted to see me Chief Webber?" she asks opening the door.

It takes her less than ten seconds to notice Mark sitting in one of the chairs in the office. "Yes, please take a seat." Webber gestures to the open chair. Taking a seat, Lexie has a feeling this conversation will not be a fun one.

Clearing his throat, Webber looks at both of them. "So I can't say I've encountered before where we have a head of a department married to an intern. Occasionally we get a resident married to an attending, but you two pose a particularly unique situation." The Chief starts and Lexie groans internally.

Before he can continue, Lexie can't help but to butt in. "We're separated. At the moment Mark and I are technically separated, we don't even live together." She can feel Mark's head drop at this, it's true. They're not living together and she came out here without him, without the intentions of ever living with him again.

"Like I was saying," Richard continues looking at both of them. "We have a unique situation on our hands. I just want to make sure that you'll keep your personal business out of the hospital. I trust both of you to act with the utmost etiquette and professionalism. Grey- because you're arguably one of the brightest in your class you're going to run the risk of others claiming favoritism. Between your sister, your friendship with Doctor Shepherd, and whatever the state of this marriage is, I just want you to be prepared. Both of you." From the tone of his voice Lexie wonders if he suspects something is going on or if he just genuinely wants to warn them.

"Doctor Sloan, I expect you to not favor your wife. Estranged or not you need to make sure to treat her with the same decorum that you would treat another intern of a similar caliber." At this Lexie's confused by the Chief's words. It sounds almost like he's expecting Mark to favor her. "This hospital is not a place to try and - uhm, repair your marriage. If you two do follow through with separating or resume living together then I expect you to notify HR as soon as possible." By now Lexie wishes she could leave this office.

Mark nods, his face unreadable. "Understood. Is that all?" Mark asks and Lexie just hopes they can leave. She'd love to pretend this conversation never happened.

Dismissing them with a wave of his hand, Richard gestures towards the door. "That's all. You're free to go on rounds now. And welcome to Seattle Grace Doctor Sloan."

Mark and Lexie all but jump out of their seats and sprint towards the door. "Is it just me or did that feel like getting called to the principal's office?" Lexie asks once they've crossed the catwalk.

"Have you ever been called to the principal's office in your life Lexie? And for an award doesn't count." Mark asks finding it hard to believe that Lexie has ever gotten in trouble in her life. He remembered her worrying about bringing the wrong color pen to an exam, he really can't see her getting in trouble.

Laughing softly she looks back to him. "I'm not sure I've ever gotten in trouble, but I would imagine that conversation is what getting in trouble feels like. I'm sure you would know better than me what getting in trouble feels like." The teasing comes so naturally that Lexie doesn't even know she's doing it until after the words fall from her lips.

Nodding in agreement Mark looks over at her. "You're right there, we both know I spent more than my fair share of time in trouble." The two step onto the elevator, each pressing a different floor. The conversation dies between them as the elevator doors shut.

Lexie's floor comes up first. "I'll see you around." She says slipping out of the elevator just before the doors shut. Leaving Mark in the elevator alone, he runs his hands through his hair, leaning back against the wall. He lets out a deep breath, barely gathering himself before Derek steps on.

"Let me guess, you just had an interaction with Lexie?" Derek teases standing next to Mark on the elevator.

Chuckling Mark drops his hands out of his hair. "We got called into the chief's office this morning. Where we had to promise that our personal life wouldn't get dragged into the hospital, and I had to promise I wouldn't favor Lexie even though she's light years ahead of the other interns in skill and knowledge." Mark explains.

"So basically you got lectured at like high school juniors." It takes everything Derek had to not burst out laughing at the thought of Chief Webber telling them what to do like sullen teenagers. Personally, Derek just wanted to lock them in a closet and see what happened if he left them in there for long enough.

Taking a step off the elevator, Mark falls into step with Derek. "Pretty much. We are to uphold professionalism at all times." Mark couldn't even imagine if they were still together Lexie letting him act with anything but professionalism. Not that he would ever want to put her in a situation like that at work, but Lexie would never let him act like anything other than is proper with her at work.

Across the hospital, Lexie's assigned to the pit for the day. Of all the departments, trauma is not her favorite. Whenever she spent days in the pit she always felt the furthest from saving lives. Death always seemed right around the corner here, and even if they spent all day fighting to save someone, it always seemed like they had too many dead on arrivals that she would get stuck calling.

"Two ambulances, three minutes out!" Owen yelled. Gowning up Lexie moved into the receiving bay.

As the first of the ambulances arrived, Lexie listened as the paramedic read off the stats. "Anna Siegel, Female 25, traveling with husband aged 33. Hit by a drunk driver and pinned against a telephone pole. Female took the brunt of the impact. Lost consciousness at the scene." Lexie takes the side of the gurney and begins to run with it into the trauma room. Behind her she hears the stats of the husband as they unload the second gurney.

"Anna can you hear me?" Lexie asks beginning the exam. To her side the other doctors yell out orders, asking for scans, drugs, and suture kits. Checking her eyes, Lexie sees the responsiveness of her pupils. "Left pupil is dilating slower. Can someone page Shepherd?" Lexie calls out as Anna's eyes both shoot open.

"Jon? Where's Jon?" Anna calls out straining against the table. Lexie gently tries to coax her back down.

"Anna you and Jon were in an accident. Jon's in the room next door getting checked out. Can you tell me what hurts?" Lexie pretty safely assumes that she's a candidate for internal bleeding, and they need a full body CT before moving onward.

"I can't- I need to see Jon. We were arguing when the car hit us. I need to tell him I love him and I'm sorry." She pleads as Lexie keeps trying to keep her patient calm.

Knowing that her patient will do so much damage to herself if she manages to get up off the gurney, Lexie looks her right in the eyes. "He knows. You're married right?" She asks and Anna nods weakly. "He knows that you love him, couples fight and they argue, and they say stupid things. He knows you love him, but you need to lie still so that we can make sure you're okay." She promises. The doctors to her side give her a look as she tries to calm this patient down.

Relaxing suddenly, Lexie watches her BP drop as Anna softly says "Okay." Before Lexie can even put the heavier oxygen mask on her, Anna is seizing.

Just as Lexie's pushing seizure drugs and getting ready to yell about paging Shepherd, Derek comes in the door. "What do we have here?" He asks slipping gloves on his hand.

"Anna Siegel, 25, hit by a drunk driver and pinned against a pole while driving home with her husband. I suspect internal bleeding due to the tenderness over her abdomen. Her pupils are also reacting at different speeds, we just pushed 10mg of lorazepam in an attempt to stop her seizing." Lexie reads off as Anna stops seizing. "I suggested we get a head and full body CT to check for internal bleeding and any intracranial bleeding."

Derek nods in agreement. "Good and Doctor Grey see if you can book an OR for once we've got the scans back." Once they've gotten Anna stable enough to move Lexie begins to push her towards the room with the CT machine.

Once Anna's in the machine Lexie pages Derek to come back and look at the scan. It takes only a few moment for the screen to popup. "She has a massive bleed. We're going to need to operate right away, do we have anyone that can sign a consent form or are we going to need a two doctor signature?" Derek asks.

"We're going to need two doctor signature. Her husband is unconscious in the ER. I'll call down to the OR right now and tell them we're coming." Lexie signs off on the sheet to take her into the OR. While the orderlies get Anna all settled to go down Lexie calls down to get an update on Anna's husband. He's in less than stable condition and they're trying to get him to the OR and get him stabilized.

Running up to the OR, Lexie moves to scrub in while she watches them finish prepping their patient. While she scrubs in, Derek comes in. "This is going to be a difficult surgery, I'm going to need you watch for bleeders. If we're going to prevent permanent damage, we're going to need to move quickly. How's the husband?" Dere asks as they get gloved and gowned.

She shakes her head while the gown gets tied around her. "He's touch and go, they were trying to get him into OR 3 last time I checked. They're going to come update us when he's done." Lexie explains.

Forty-five minutes into the surgery Owen comes into the OR. "Jon Siegel died 20 minutes ago." He says and Lexie feels her heart drop in her chest. All Anna had done while she was in the ER was call out for her husband and now, he's gone. In the end, Anna pulls through barely.

"The next few hours are going to tell us if she's suffered any permanent damage. Doctor Grey I want you to monitor for the next four hours." Derek says as they begin to scrub out. Which is how Lexie ends up seated by her patients beside, doing paperwork and noting the numbers on the monitors.

Suddenly, just before the fourth hour Anna begins to groan. They'd taken the intubation tube out pretty quickly as she had fought it almost the moment the anesthesia had worn off. So far Anna had nothing but good signs, Lexie would just have to break her heart when she woke up.

Once Anna groans again Lexie stands by the bedside waiting for her to open her eyes. When they finally open the patient takes one look at Lexie. "Jon died didn't he." It's not a question, the wife already knows her husband didn't survive the crash.

Sadly, Lexie nods. "He passed away at 5:30 this evening. The damage sustained in the crash was too much for his body to handle. I'm so sorry." Lexie places her hand comfortingly on Anna. Somehow, Lexie manages to make it through the exam, but she watches as her patient falls apart right in front of her eyes. Going from sobbing to catatonically silent in a matter of minutes. Remembering to arrange for a counselor to come speak with her, Lexie stays until Anna falls back asleep, and then goes to notify her extended kin.

By the time she's done all of that, Lexie finally loses it. Sinking down in an abandoned hallway, Lexie lets go of the day. Sobs shake her small form as she replays Anna crying out for her husband in the ER, and the look on her face the moment she processed her husband had died. Even though she's separated from her husband she couldn't help but think about what would happen if she lost Mark. While they weren't together, Lexie needed to know that he was safe. That she would never be the un-updated emergency contact rushing into the ER to find out the love of her life had died. Nothing would change that, regardless of what happened, in the end he would have always been the love of her life. Just sometimes, the love of your life isn't meant to last for your whole life, sometimes they blip in and out. She's so wrapped up replaying it in her head and thinking about what would happen if Mark died that she doesn't notice as someone comes and sits down next to her.

"Lex? You okay?" Of course Mark had found her.

Wiping her eyes she lifted her head to look up at him. "I had to tell my patient that the husband she called out for in the ER died while in surgery. They'd been fighting when a drunk driver ran into them and pinned their car against the pole." Lexie explains looking at him. She's suddenly grateful for her photographic memory, and that she can never forget him.

He runs a hand over her arm comfortingly, wondering where her mind was at right now. "I'm sorry. It's always hard to lose a patient." He hesitates for half a second on what to say next. Instead of saying anything he chooses to just run his hand through her hair, remembering how years ago she said how when she was sick or hurt she liked having her hair stroked.

Without even thinking Lexie laid her head down on his shoulder. "I miss you." She says quietly. "I know I'm the one that left and it doesn't change anything, but my patient today reminded me of you. Somedays are just hard." Lexie knows she should pull herself away, but she just can't bring herself to.

Mar's a little bit shocked to hear her admit it. "I miss you too. I wish you would give us a chance, let me try to fix it." He's cautious here, not wanting to scare her off.

Sighing Lexie gets up. "I wish it was. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have leaned on you. I gave up that right the day I left." She apologizes rapidly and Mark knows he's only got a few moments before she runs.

"Don't worry about it. You can come to me, whenever, with anything. Doesn't matter what's going on between us. I'm here for you." He promises, looking for any way in. Mark's brain is already rolling, coming up with plans.

"Thanks. I"m gonna go check on my patients and get some sleep. Thanks again Mark." Lexie says before walking up.

"Of course, any time." He says and watches her walk off. The moment she turns the corner he turns around and runs at a dead sprint across the hospital. Opening the door to Derek's office, he's panting when he finally gets in the room.

Derek looks up concerned to see Mark standing there breathing so heavily. "I know what to do."

"What?" Derek asks having no idea what's going on.

"I know how I can win Lexie back."

AN: A longgggg chapter. I just couldn't break it up! Thanks for reading and drop me a review if you feel like it!


	8. Bound By Love

AN: And a second update!

With two coffees in his hand, Mark walked up to the nurses' station, watching around to catch the intern he's looking for.

"So is this step one of your plan?" Derek asks writing on a chart as he walks up to Mark. Yesterday Mark had laid out an extensive plan where he could win back the trust of his wife. Shockingly, Derek had sat there through the whole idea listening to Mark rant and rave as he explained how he could win Lexie back.

Smiling proudly, he nodded. "Yep. Be friends, and friends bring each other coffee." Mark said gesturing to the cups in front of him.

"You know we've been friends since we were five and you've never brought me coffee? If friends bring each other coffee can I collect on that?" Derek teases him.

Chuckling, Mark shakes his head. "You're not my wife. In this case, it's more of a friends who sleep together, had a big ceremony in front of a lot of people, made vows for life type of friendship. Not so much the throwing ball out front type of friends." Mark explains, looking to the door as he watched someone come through.

Walking into the lobby Meredith sees Mark and Derek standing there talking. Confused by Mark's behavior and his glare on the door she walks up to the two of them. "What the hell are you two doing?" She gestures between the two of them. "You're standing there staring at the door, with two cups of coffee in your hand."

Without a glance at each other, the two respond "nothing," unison.

Rocking back on her heels and raising her eyebrows on the two of them she speaks slowly. "Right… well, Doctor Sloan I'm on your service today." Meredith tells him only to realize he's not even listening. "Hello?" She says again, but Mark has already taken off towards where Lexie had just walked in.

Walking up to her he hands her the coffee. "This is for you." He offers. He knows that Lexie spent last night on call, and right now she probably really needed the coffee. In Mark's mind this was the perfect plan, ease her in with caffeine.

Eyeing him confused she looks at the cup. "For me?" She asks not taking the cup in her hands and trying to figure out.

Nodding he looks right at her. "For you. I know you spent last night on call, and a lot of the coffee here in the hospital sucks. I know that Seattle's supposed to be like the coffee capital of the world, but it sucks compared to a good New York cup. So I brought you some." He explains placing the cup in her hands.

"You brought me a cup of coffee." She repeats and if Mark didn't know she was so smart he would be confused. "Do you have some sort of ulterior motive here?" She places her free hand on her hip and looks up at him. Lexie's just tired enough to be confused and skeptical about his supposedly nice gesture.

"Just to be friendly. You know, it's nice to spend time with you and hangout. So I thought we could try being friends, and friends bring each other coffee." Mark explains taking a sip of the coffee in his hand.

From Lexie's face it's clear that she doesn't believe him all the way. "Right. Friends. Well, thank you for the coffee. I've got rounds, but, thank you." Lexie says heading off towards rounds. She turns around once more to look behind her, Mark waves and she's still confused by the new developments.

Walking back over to Meredith and Derek he can't keep the smile off his face. "I do not understand what I just witnessed, but whatever that was," Meredith gestures in his area. "Was weird and uncomfortable. How much more of this am I going to have to witness on your service today?" As much fun as Meredith thought it might be to sit there and witness whatever Mark had planned, she didn't know if she could spend her whole day watching this.

"Probably a lot more Big Grey. I'm going to try and become friends with my wife. We're going to become friends again; we're going to make it work. But first, you and I are going to go place a skin graft. Let's go." Mark says taking his cup of coffee and heading off towards the lab where he grew skin grafts.

Having to practically take off at a sprint to keep up with him, Meredith moves after Sloan. "Oh, this is going to be a long day." She mumbles to herself.

Looking around him to realize he now stood alone Derek closed the chart he currently was working on. "Alright then. This oughta be fun."

Hours later Lexie goes to grab something from her locker when she notices a bag of peanut butter cups sitting atop her bag. For half a moment she wonders who put them there, but they're the small individually wrapped ones, her favorite, and she knows exactly who put them there. Tearing open the bag she unwraps one and pops it into her mouth. She has 6 more hours on the end of her second 48 hour shift of the week, six more hours and then she has a whole two days off. The next two days were her only two consecutive days off for weeks.

As much as she loved living with her alcoholic father, she needed to move out. Lately she'd heard him start throwing things the drunker he'd gotten and even though she'd started locking her door at night, she knew she needed to get out of there. She wanted to get her father help, but she knew she couldn't do that while it was dangerous for her.

Taking the bag of candy and the stack of charts she had to finish doing, Lexie decided to look for a place she could chart for a few hours. After running into full table after full table, she walks by the OR board she notices Mark still has about five hours left in his surgery. "Friends let friends use their office to chart right?" she mumbles to herself. Deciding that she could be in and out before he even realized, and he probably still left his office unlocked Lexie decides to go let herself in.

Reaching his office she tests the lock to see that he really hasn't learned to lock it. "How many times have I told him that he's going to get his stuff stolen." She muttered as she slid into the office. Sprawling out on his couch she begins working. Not paying attention to the clock or how many charts she actually has to do, she doesn't notice as it approaches the end of her shift.

After about five and a half hours the door opens and she doesn't hear him come in until he yells. "Ah!" he yells surprised to see someone on his couch. It takes him longer than he thought to process who's sitting on his couch.

Lexie jumps "Oh my god I'm sorry. I couldn't find a place that didn't have people crawling everywhere and was quiet. I checked the board and saw you had a surgery so I thought I would borrow your office and leave before you finished. This is probably way overstepping." She apologizes and for half a second Mark's transported back to the night he proposed, where she sat in his living room pouring over her work.

"Really don't worry about it. You're welcome to use my office. I know how you get when you're all focused. I was just surprised to see you sitting there is all." He said moving over to his desk to drop his paperwork in the pile of things he would do tomorrow morning when he got in.

"Well that would probably explain why I planned to only stay for five hours and now my shift is over." She says stacking the charts up so she can leave. "Thanks for letting me use your office." She says opening the door to leave.

Not wanting her to leave yet he comes up with an offer. "If you're done, and I'm done, and we're friends. We could maybe grab a drink?" He's hesitant to offer, not wanting to push too much too fast, but he wanted to put the idea out there.

Smiling softly she looks at Mark. "Not today, I'm going apartment hunting tomorrow with my day off, and I want to get some sleep since I've been here for over 50 hours." She says. Pausing for a moment she speaks before he can get a word in. "But ask me again sometime." Lexie tells him before heading out the door with a smile on her face.

"I am so screwed." She says once she's on the other side of the door. Little did she know her husband said the exact same thing on the other side of the door before sinking into his chair.

AN: So Mark and Lexie are going to be friends? That ought to work out well. Well, let me know what you thought!


	9. 9 Crimes

AN: So this chapter is a lot darker than the others. Content warning for physical abuse and violence.

Getting out of her car Lexie can't help but feel better than she's felt in weeks. For the first time it feels almost like the Mark she knows is back. Although it's a long road back to where they were, tonight was the first night in a year she felt like they had an actual shot at making this all work. Not even Thatcher's drinking could ruin her mood tonight.

Before Lexie even opened the door to her house she heard a crash. Bracing herself, she carefully unlocked the door to her house. Mentally she calculated the distance between here and her room, trying to figure out how she could make it inside without gaining Thatcher's attention.

She barely makes it across the threshold before she's ducking and avoiding something flying at her head. "Get out of my house!" Thatcher screams, charging at Lexie. Thatcher isn't a large man, but he's just big enough to slam Lexie against the wall. Dropping her purse in shock she tries to shove him off of her.

"Dad stop!" Lexie screams, feeling his hands on her throat. Her vocal cords constrict as his hands tighten. Desperately trying to get him off her as she feels her airways struggle to get enough oxygen and her body panics. Swinging her arms at her father Lexie tries to free herself. From this angle Thatcher has a hold on her that she can't break. Her legs kick out at him but she can't lift both up without losing the bit of ground she has and she doesn't think that she's strong enough to get him off of her.

Suddenly his arms move and she feels her body forcibly moved. Thatcher practically roars back at her. "Just leave! That's all you ungrateful bitches do is leave!" He screams shoving her against the wall again. Lexie feels her head hit the wall, stars suddenly begin swimming in her vision, and it takes every ounce of strength she has in her to not drop to the ground. Every muscle in her body hurts, and she's never been more terrified in her life.

Struggling against him, Lexie remembers something she saw on tv about swiping your leg. In pure desperation she tries to swipe at his leg to knock him offer. He's drunk enough to where the movement, even if not technically correct throws him off balance. When his leg goes his hands come off her and she's able to shove him the rest of the way away. Without a moment's hesitation Lexie runs out the door. She doesn't notice until she's out of the house that she doesn't have her keys or her purse. Lexie can't go back inside.

"Please have left your phone in your pocket." She mumbles frantically to herself. Her head's spinning and she's trying to focus but her pockets come up empty. Sitting down against the garage door where she knows Thatcher can't see her, she wraps her arms around her knees.

That's when she feels it.

Her pager.

The hospital made them all use these pagers with keyboards so they could respond to pages quicker, and she'd learned to never take it off. Even on her days off she left the pager on her belt loop. Shakily her hands reach down.

Lexie tries to remember a phone number, any phone number. Her head throbs as she tries to remember. "You have a photographic memory. Remember a phone number." She says running her hand across her forehead. Suddenly a number pops into her head. The same number that she'd memorized calling from the crappy phone in her dorm at Harvard, the one that for years popped up on her phone to tell her he was coming home for dinner, to ask if she wanted to blow off responsibilities and eat pizza in bed.

 _Mark_.

Punching in the number with trembling hands she sends a 911 page with the address. She has just enough characters to get in the L in her name and send it off. Leaning her head back against the garage she focuses on trying to stay conscious. "He'll come." she mumbles to herself. "He'll come." She repeats.

She doesn't know how long she sits there, focusing on just staying awake.

Meanwhile across town, Mark sets down his jacket on the chair and barely sits down before he hears his pager go off. For half a second he debates ignoring it, but he knows better. Reading the words scrolling across the screen Mark's heart stopped. _911 - 431 Meadowridge Dr - L_. He knows he knows that address.

"What the hell is L?" He asks out loud. Repeating the message he realizes why he knows that address.

 _Lexie_.

Jumping up he grabs his keys and sprints out of the room towards his car. Dialing his phone as he runs down the stairs he repeats the mantra in his mind. "Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick up."

She doesn't answer.

Heart-racing Mark finally reaches his car. Plugging in the address he speeds down the streets. Coming to a red light, he takes a look both ways to check for cops and other cars. When he sees none he takes off through the intersection. Dialing her phone again, he goes straight to voicemail. When he turns into her neighborhood he recognizes the streets, they'd come to visit enough times for enough holidays that he knows where he's going.

Pulling into the driveway, the lights from his car shine on her as she lifts her head up to look at him. Throwing the car into park and shutting it off he practically flings himself out of the car.

"Lex - what happened?" He asks kneeling in front of her. Even in the dark he can see the bruises on her neck.

"I'm sorry… I didn't… I couldn't remember any other numbers… My phone's inside and I couldn't… Your number was the only one..." She bursts into tears and his hand instinctually goes to her hair.

Making sure he's completely in front of her so that she can see him, he knows he needs to coax her off the ground and figure out what she's done. "I don't care. You can call me, page me, whenever. Can you tell me what happened?" He wants to get her off the ground and away from the house.

"I came home, he grabbed me, and he slammed me against the wall a couple of times. My head hurts, I-I-I think I hit it on the door frame or the wall and my throat, it's kind of hard to breathe and swallow." Lexie says and Mark's begins mentally triaging her.

"Lex can you stand up on your own?" He asks and she shakes her head. She's honestly not sure that if she tried to stand up she wouldn't pass out or fall over. "Okay, I'm going to lift you up and put you in the car. Tell me if it's too much pain." He carefully slides his hands under her back and legs as he lifts her with ease. Desperately, he tries not to notice how light she feels or how she groans when he lifts her up.

Gingerly, he places her in the front seat of his car and slides the buckle over her. "It's going to be okay." He promises, backing out of the driveway and heading towards the hospital.

"It's going to be okay." He repeats again.

AN: I know I know, but you didn't think this was going to stay happy the whole time did you? Let me know what you thought!


	10. A Bitter Song

"Lex I need you to stay awake." Mark cautions as he drives them to the hospital. Not knowing exactly what had happened, Mark wanted to avoid any risk of brain damage. Until Derek had taken a look at her head Mark wasn't willing to risk letting her fall asleep. "I can talk or you can talk but I need you to stay awake okay?" He pleads taking a glance at her in the passenger's seat.

Nodding weakly Lexie looks right at him. "Just talk to me, tell me anything." She rasps out, not wanting to struggle through the pain of talking. Knowing she needs to stay awake, she waits for him to talk, when he spoke she would stay focused. If Mark just kept talking then Lexie could stay awake and listen to him talk to her while they drove the fifteen minutes to the hospital.

Mark doesn't know what to say at first, he's trying to not panic while they drive. The first thing that comes to his mind falls from his lips "I sold my motorcycle."

Cocking her head to look at him, her face crumples in confusion. Mark loved that bike, they'd fought over it dozens of times, especially after Derek crashed his. After that accident Lexie had begged Mark to either sell his or stop riding it, he hadn't and they continuously argued when he chose to ride it. "I sold it about two weeks after you left. I knew you hated the thing and I thought I should finally get rid of it. I got sick of looking at it and thinking about how much you hated the thing and how we fought every single time I rode it. So I got rid of it." Mark explains. It'd been one of the things he did in an attempt to help win her back. "Plus it's not like I'm stupid enough to ride it in Seattle where it rains all the time. The roads are too slick for me to chance that."

"Thank god for that. I hated that stupid thing." Lexie says softly as they pull in to the hospital.

Putting the car into park and getting out he opens her door. "I'm going to lift you out of the car now okay?" Mark gently speaks as he squats down and pulls her out of the car. Walking through the doors of the pit he see Torres standing there.

"What the hell is that Grey?" Torres yells alarmed when she sees the attending walk into the ER cradling his intern wife. "Take her to Trauma Room 2. I'll page Shepherd and Hunt." Walking to the nurses station Torres also makes the mental note to page the Chief and Bailey.

While Torres sends out pages to the senior surgeons Mark takes Lexie into the Trauma Room. Laying her down on the bed he begins hooking her up to the monitors. By the time he's got her hooked up to the most basic machines the room starts filling in. Trying to give her a little bit of space so she wouldn't get overwhelmed, Mark moves to take a step back. Before his foot has even hit the ground Lexie grabs onto him. "Don't." She whispers, her eyes pleading as tears fill them.

Taking a step back he positions himself in her eyesight but out of the way. "Okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." Mark whispers running his hand through her hair. Despite the fact he's never been more unsure as their status as a couple, he knows that nothing is making him leave her tonight. As long as she wants him here, he's here, and if she wants him to leave he'll sit in the hallway outside her room.

Derek bursts into the room. "What the hell happened?" He instantly puts gloves on and moves towards examining Lexie's head as he gets into the room. Thankfully, he doesn't push Mark away from where he's seated.

In all honesty Mark doesn't know the full extent of what happened, he knows Thatcher did this, but he doesn't know to what extent this happened regularly. A pit forms in his stomach as he realizes exactly how little he knew about Lexie's current living situation. Had Thatcher done this multiple times? Earlier in the day Lexie had said she wanted to find a new place to live - was Thatcher the reason? "She went home, Thatcher was there, he attacked her, slammed her against the wall. When I got to her she was complaining about problems breathing and swallowing, and head pain." Mark explains looking at Derek and watching the treatment plan formulating behind his eyes. The doctors move around Lexie, carefully examining her and asking questions as needed. None of them try to move Mark from his spot next to her head.

"Okay I want a CT of the head and spine. I want to make sure no damage has been done to those, I don't love her reaction speed to light so I want to check for any contusions or concussions." Derek begins writing down the orders for the tests he wants run. "Torres - what do you want?"

"I want a chest xray to get a look at her ribs, also there's some bruising on this right ankle so I'd like to get a scan of that." Callie calls out what she wants and looks over Lexie's body again to check if there's anything she missed.

Writing all of this down, Derek looks to Hunt. "I want to keep her on oxygen and monitor her levels. She's got decreased breath sounds and I want to make sure that nothing punctured. Let's get an ENT she's not married to down here to get a look at her throat." Owen says signing off on the procedures he wants done on the chart and cutting off any protest Mark had. "Let's get the workup going, Shepherd are you good to take the lead?" Owen's offering Derek an out in case he's too personal to this case, they're all too close to actually work on this, but no one here would risk putting Lexie's care in the hands of a lesser doctor.

"Yeah I'll take the lead. When the Chief and Bailey can you give them an update, Hunt? And Torres come with me so we can evaluate the scans together." Both the doctors nod and Derek sets the gurney to move.

Mark moves with the gurney. "We've got her." Derek puts a hand on his chest to stop him.

Shaking his head Mark looks down at the woman on the gurney. "I'm going with her. I'll go into the booth during the scan, but I'm not leaving her like this." Mark's voice dares Derek to challenge him on this. Earlier today Mark had gotten one of the scariest pages of his life, he wasn't in a place to handle physically separating himself from Lexie right now.

Once they get Lexie settled on the CT bed, Mark lets the other doctors clear out first. He'll press the button to send her into the machine. "You're going to be just fine. You know what to do here, and I'll be in the booth if you need me." He says moving towards the button.

Just as he hits the button he hears her make a noise from the bed. "Mark?" Lexie calls softly.

Stepping closer to her, he watches her go into the machine. "Yeah Lex?"

"I love you."

AN: So she still loves him! Whattt. Let me know what you thought!


	11. Shelter from the Storm

AN: Sometimes the chapters don't always show up on the top of the fanfic page - so make sure you've read chapter nine before reading this one or else you'll be a little confused! Also I made up medical stuff because really google med is confusing so if it's not 100p accurate it's because it worked better for the story this way.

Heading into the booth Mark moves in a daze. Lexie told him she loves him. A year ago he wouldn't of thought anything of his wife telling him she loves him, but now the revelation had him almost dropping to the ground. Mark all but collapses into the chair next to Derek.

"You alright?" Derek asks while they wait for the scans to come up on the screen.

Grasping at straws for what to say, Mark struggles to put into words exactly what he feels. "I'm overwhelmed. My wife's father attacked her tonight, and when she went to page someone I was the only number she could remember, I go to get her and suddenly she can't handle me being further than five feet from her, and she tells me she loves me even though we're separated because she left." He basically blurts out everything he says, and he doesn't mean to basically vomit his entire night onto Derek and Callie, but he's overwhelmed.

Derek reaches out and places a hand on Mark's shoulder. "This doesn't have to be the end. You learned what happens when you almost lose her. So go fight for her." Derek says. "You always loved Lexie so much more than I ever loved Addison and we almost made it. You'll make it work. She wanted you tonight and you kept her calm. It'll be okay." He knows his words can only help so much but he really believes that Mark and Lexie can make it.

Dropping his head in his hands Mark tries to pull it together but falls short, just picturing pulling up to that house again and again.

"She's different when you're here." Callie interjects into the conversation. "The Lexie Grey that I worked with before you got here, and don't get me wrong she's incredibly gifted, but she's a better doctor when you're here." Callie had witnessed over the past month since Mark arrived as Lexie suddenly grew more confidence, like now she believed she could actually do her job.

The scans pop up on the screen and all three heads whip.

"I'll want to confirm once I pick up the films but she's got a couple of cracked ribs. Not fully broken, but enough I want to keep her overnight and figure out a treatment plan. I definitely want her off that ankle for 24 hours and I want to wrap it for at least a week." Callie raises her hand to point on the screen where she sees the cracks. Nausea boils in Mark's throat at the thought of someone laying their hands on her.

Clicking to zoom in on the area he thought he saw something, Derek sighs. "Right there. I see signs of a concussion and relatively small bleed that should clear itself up over the next few days. I want repeat scans in 12 hours to be sure, but I feel confident that it should clear up on its own. She's probably more bruised than anything else." Internally, Derek curses, after everything these two had been through it seems unfair to stick Lexie with a serious injury.

Quitely, Mark asks the question that's burning a hole in his brain. "But she's going to be okay right?" Mark doesn't want a world without Lexie. He'd rather live separated from her forever than know that she's gone.

"Yes. From my medical standpoint, Lexie's going to be uncomfortable for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but she's going to be just fine." With Derek's words Mark loses it. He begins sobbing. "Hey you've got to keep it together for Lexie. I know that this was horrifying, but you got there and you got her. Don't let this be the end." Derek warns running his hand over Mark's back to try and calm him down.

Snapping his head up, Mark rubs at his face. "I'm okay. Can I go pull her out of the machine?" He asks carefully.

"Yeah and then we'll take her upstairs. There are a couple meds we can put her on and I'd really like to wrap those ribs." Torres says.

Getting up Mark goes to get Lexie out of the machine. Pressing the button he waits for the bed to come out. "Hey, Torres and I are going to take you upstairs. Torres wants to tape your ribs and Derek wants to monitor your head for a few hours. Apparently you're not quite as hard headed as we thought." Mark explains and Lexie chuckles.

Helping her into the bed, he and Torres take her upstairs. Earlier when they'd changed her out of her clothes he'd been facing her head and hadn't noticed she had a gown on until they'd placed her on the bed in the CT machine.

Disappearing for a moment, Torres comes back with some bandages. "It doesn't look like you've got any lacerations that need stitching, but I'm sure Mark can handle any treatment on any of them that need anything. Your ankle is a little messed up and I'd like to wrap it, just to prevent any long term damage." Pausing, she looks directly at Lexie. "Your ribs have a significant amount of damage, it doesn't look like any are in danger of puncturing your lungs. At first I'd like to wrap them just to make sure that they heal correctly. It's not going to be comfortable, so I'll let you pick which you'd like to do first."

Lexie doesn't hesitate for even a second. "Ribs first. Let's just get it over with."

Torres nods. "I'm going to unsnap your gown. Lexie your right side is a lot worse than your left so if you want Mark to stay and hold your hand or something he either needs to move directly behind you or to your side. Or he can leave if you want, whatever you're most comfortable with." Torres offers multiple options to try and give Lexie as much control over the situation as possible.

"On my side please?" Her voice comes out quiet, and she moves slightly to look at Mark. Her chocolate eyes plead with him to not leave her alone during this.

Positioning himself in a spot that's to her left where she can see him and Torres can move to wrap her easily. "Is this okay?" He asks both of them.

Nodding Torres looks between them. "As long as Lexie's comfortable it's great. Just try to stay as still as possible."

"I'm good with him there. Just don't let go of hand." Lexie says her eyes meeting Mark's. From his vantage point he can see the fear in Lexie's eyes.

Slowly, Torres unsnaps the gown and Mark can already see the bruises forming. They litter from Lexie's delicate neck downwards. The sight of the bruises make him want to be sick or come after Thatcher. How could anyone do this to their child he wondered. He and Lexie had left bruises on each other from sex before and Mark had apologized for three days, to the point where she actually told him to shut up before he ruined their night.

As the wrap goes around Lexie's body she can't help to let out sounds of discomfort. Scrambling in his brain, he tries to think about anything he can talk about to distract her. Part of him debates repeating her earlier statement of love to her. Deciding that he needs to say something, he wracks his brain for topics before finally speaking.

"I still can't believe you got me to move to Seattle. I mean I know you moved here on your own, but of course I was going to follow you. So you got me, who hates the rain to move across the country to a city that rains all the time. You've got to admit that's pretty impressive." He smirks hoping he can get a small rise out of her.

Lexie's eyes roll at him. "It's not my fault you suck at following instructions." She'd shrug but she's not to move. "You're the one who took months to figure out where I was, clearly you're not that bright if you can't follow instructions and moved to a place you hate."

"I didn't think you'd come here. Believe me I must have called every surgical program on the east coast before I thought of here." Mark says sincerely.

Interrupting them Callie snaps the gown back up. "Okay that's all set. You can lay back, and Mark if you want to get her on an IV and hook her up to the monitors that'd be helpful."

Grabbing the leads he got her connected to everything. "I'm going to stick the IV in you, close your eyes." Mark explains tying off her arm to make the vein prominent.

Looking between them Callie looks confused. "Close your eyes?" She prompts noticing had Mark had said it like it was no big deal.

"I'm terrified of needles when they're going in my arm." Lexie explains her eyes still squeezed shut.

Inserting the IV and connecting her to the bag the the tube, Mark lets her know that she can open her eyes. "The amount of arguments we had over flu shots you wouldn't believe." Mark offers. For two people that are separated it's hard for Callie not to notice how they act like a couple without even realizing it. She wonders if they even know they're doing it.

Gently setting her foot down on the bed, Callie stands up. "I'll be back to check in a few hours, and you and I will have followups for a few weeks just to make sure that everything's correctly, but for now I think you're okay to get some rest." Moving towards the door she stops before turning back to face Mark and Lexie. "You two are really lucky to have each other, and I'm really happy you're okay."

Once Callie's out of the room, Mark turns to look at Lexie. "I'm so happy you're okay. Whatever you need, I'm here." He promises without a moment's hesitation.

"I know that we have a lot we need to talk about, cam you just hold me and stroke my hair? Please?" Lexie asks.

Flicking off the lights, and taking off his shoes, Mark walks over to Lexie's less injured side to carefully get into bed with her. "Whatever we need to talk about can wait. Just tell me if I'm hurting you and I'll move." He says positioning himself next to her. Gingerly, he reaches so he can stroke her hair without causing her more pain.

Lexie softly begins to cry as the weight of the day unfolds on her.

"It's going to be okay. I'm here, it's going to be okay." Mark comforts softly trying to lure her to rest.

"It's going to be okay."

AN: And that's 11 chapters! It seems like they're finally getting somewhere - will this be enough of a warning call for both of them though? Let me know what you think!


	12. Be OK

Lexie woke up the next morning wrapped in Mark's arms. Despite having spent the night getting woken up by various nurses to check her brain function she slept better than she had in months. She's surprised to have slept so well in such a small bed, but she also knew a lot of that had to do with Mark having stayed.

After only a few minutes Mark wakes up. "Hey - how ya feeling?" His arms don't come off of her right away, and she doesn't mind.

"I wouldn't run a marathon, but all things considered I think I'm gonna be okay." Lexie knew she had a lot that she needed to work through about last night. Between spending the night with her estranged husband and her father, she needed some time to figure out what she wanted.

Running his hand through her hair he smiles softly at that. "That's good I'm really glad you're okay." Mark doesn't move yet, he knows he needs to and he probably has to go to work, but for this moment he doesn't want to move.

"What time do you need to work?" She asks looking up by him.

Mark hadn't thought about going to work today at all. After last night he'd kind of figured that he would take a few days off and help her heal and maybe take her home. "I wasn't planning on working today. I thought I'd ask Richard for the day off and help you." Mark explained, sitting up slightly to give her a little more space on the bed.

Shaking her head slightly, Lexie looked up at him. "I kind of wanted today to think and figure out what to do next. You should go to work." Just like that Mark felt himself get boxed back out of Lexie's life. Any walls that she'd opened up last night had gone right back up.

Last night had been a lot for her, and she wanted some time alone today to process and figure out where to go from here. "I know that I leaned on you a lot last night, and I'm so thankful. But last night was one of the worst nights of my life, and I need some time to process and figure out what comes next. I just- I need you to go to work so I can think." Lexie rambles. She'd never managed to stop the rambling and right now she felt vaguely uncomfortable asking him to leave and the more uncomfortable she felt the worse she rambled.

Even if he didn't like it, it made sense to Mark. "Okay. I'll go to work, but you can page me if you need anything?" He doesn't want to push her too far too fast, and he figured if he went to work today then maybe tomorrow Lexie would let him stay with her, and take her home with him once she was discharged.

"Thank you." Lexie says grasping his hand briefly to really emphasize her point.

"Of course. Whatever you need." Mark said dropping a kiss on the top of her head. "Seriously page me for anything." He says before walking out of the room.

Meanwhile across the hospital, Meredith walked up to Cristina. "So, last night I tried to invite Derek over or to go get a drink. But I never heard anything. I checked the OR board and he never scrubbed in last night. What do you think that's all about?" Meredith asked taking a drink of her coffee. Meredith and Derek weren't together, but it hadn't necessarily stopped them from sometimes seeing each other. She knew that at some point she had to make a decision, but for right now she avoided any permanent decisions.

Turning to look at her, Cristina looked at Meredith like she'd grown a second head. "Dude he spent last night here monitoring little Grey. I know you're not that close to her but I think even you'd prefer her with McDreamy as her doctor."

Meredith stops in her tracks. "As her doctor? What do you mean?" Her voice rises suddenly concerned that the sister she didn't want but had grown to enjoy her company had died.

"Last night apparently Thatcher attacked her. She's up on the sixth floor. Apparently Sloan carried her into the ER and refused to leave - and you're gone." Cristina stopped in the middle of her sentence as she realizes Meredith had taken off at a dead sprint towards Lexie's room.

Stopping at the nurses station, Meredith tries to quell the rising panic in her body. They'd sent Thatcher home from the ER before after drinking too much, but she didn't know he could do this. "What room is Alexandra Grey in?" She asks the charge nurse who takes one look at her before pointing into the room right across the hall.

Opening the door to the room she steps inside to spot Lexie laying in the bed. From her spot in the doorway she can see the bruises on her neck and on her arms. Swallowing, Meredith takes a step into the room and shuts the door. At the sound of the door closing Lexie's eyes open and she takes a look at her sister. "Hey Mer." She greets, moving as much as her body allowed.

"What happened?" Meredith asks her mind still struggling to process anything else.

Sighing Lexie looks at her. "Last night Dad got violent, it was the first time, but it's basically enough to make sure that I'm going to be trying to find a new place the moment I get out of here. I'm okay. I've got some pretty bad bruising, a concussion bad enough to take me out of work for at least a week, and some cracked ribs, but I'll be okay." She says looking at her. "Maybe having Thatcher around wasn't all it's cracked up to be." Lexie jokes. It's in poor taste she's sure, but she can't help it.

Nodding, Meredith processes all of this. "So you're going to be fine then."

"Just fine." Lexie reiterates.

"Do you know what you'll do when you leave?" Meredith asks thinking of all the space in her house and how she couldn't just let Lexie go back to where Thatcher lived.

When Lexie had kicked Mark out earlier she'd planned on coming up with a plan this morning but had just fallen asleep instead. "No, I'm sure Mark would let me stay with him if I asked but I don't know where we're at yet so I'm trying to figure it out."

Meredith's eyes drop as she comes up with her offer. Taking care of people never felt like it came naturally to her. "I've got an extra room. It's technically the attic but it's finished and there's actual stairs, not like a little ladder. You can stay with me. It's my mother's house, but I live there with Alex and Izzy. We've got room." Meredith's offer is in earnest. She's got the space and she wants to take care of her sister.

"Really?" Lexie's eyes light up. "You don't mind?"

Meredith nods. "You can't go home, and we're friends. We happen to share a shitty dad, but I would really like it if you came and lived with us." She says again as her pager goes off. "Shit I've got to go, but let me know when you're getting discharged. I'll get everything all set up." As the pager beeps again Meredith takes off at a run.

Lexie, now satisfied that she's managed to deal with one thing lays her head back down and closes her eyes. Thinking to herself that she'll be okay.

AN: A little sisterly bonding! How will Mark handle Lexie choosing to live with Meredith? Will I ever write another MerDer scene? Review and let me know what you thought please!


	13. World Spins Madly On

"So you spent last night monitoring my sister?" Meredith asks taking a seat across from Derek in the cafeteria. Her irritation over Derek not answering her had evaporated the moment that she'd heard about Lexie.

Looking up from his medical journal Derek looks up at her. "I spent last night monitoring Lexie." He's not sure what information she'd been given from Lexie, and he didn't want to breach her trust. He'd known Lexie forever, he'd gone to both of her graduations, danced with her at her wedding, and helped her study for her practicals. Lexie was like the fifth little sister.

Placing her hand on him, Meredith lifts her head to look right at him. "Thank you. I - We've just started to actually get close, and Thatcher. What he did. Thank you for taking care of my sister." Her voice isn't loud, and it's one of the first times that she's ever referred to Lexie as her sister.

Derek's hand squeezes hers comfortingly. "I wouldn't of let anyone else monitor her. Even if it meant falling asleep in my office so I could check on her." He knows this moment is probably going to be brief.

"Was she - how bad was it when Mark brought her in? She told me the injuries, but how bad was it when she came in?" Meredith wasn't sure if she wanted to know how Lexie had been when Mark brought her in. The picture of the younger Grey battered and bruised already had taken a spot in her brain that she wished it hadn't.

Sighing softly, Derek keeps his voice gentle. "I wasn't there when she was immediately brought in. Torres paged me after Mark brought her in. It took about ten minutes to get there, by the time I had gotten there Mark had firmly positioned himself at her head in her line of sight. She was shaken up and silent, but Mark stayed with her the whole night. She'll be okay." Even without operating last night ranked on one of his most stressful nights as a doctor.

Nodding Meredith asks one of the last questions on her mind. "Do you think they'll make it work? I know there's a lot you and I don't know, and we're not them, but they seem to really love each other." It still baffled Meredith's mind to try and figure out how Mark and Lexie who seemed to love each other so much could find themselves so fractured.

"I really hope so." He still had so many questions about what had happened in the year after he left New York. He didn't understand how the couple he had seen only hours before he found Addison with one of her colleagues could be the couple he worked with every day.

Lifting her hand off Derek's, she stands up. "Well I have to go, I'm on Bailey's service today and you know how she is." Meredith pauses for a moment. "If you wanted to get a drink sometime soon, that'd be fun." She offers internally beating herself up for her phrasing.

The McDreamy smile spreads across his face as she makes her offer. "Just let me know when." Derek watches her walk away. "Maybe we'll all be okay." He mutters going back to his medical journal.

Before Derek even finishes his paragraph the chair across from him gets pulled back out. "So I'm moving up my plan." Mark boasts proudly.

Raising his head once again Derek looks to see Mark now seated across from him. It would seem that he's not going to finish the article he wanted to read. "What?" He asks his eyebrows raising in confusion.

Mark gestures as he started speaking again. "My plan to win my wife back. Yesterday taught me to not waste time with this stupid just trying to be friends thing. Now she's definitely not in a place where she can go home, so I'm going to ask her to come home with me." He speaks like he's come up with the brightest plan in the whole entire world.

"Don't you live in a hotel?"

Making some whooshing sound with his mouth Mark continues onward. "We can find a house, but living with me in the hotel room is a much better option than her going home. She told me she loves me. I don't want to have another night where I go home alone, I don't want to have another night where she PAGES me because she's dropped her phone and needs help. Last night was the end. I can't do that again." He pauses for a moment to collect himself.

Mark continues onward, not stopping as he speaks. "I know who she is, and if she's going through her worse right now, I want to go through it with her. She makes me happier than anything I've ever known, and if I can have a part in making her happy again that's all I want to do. That's all I want to do for the rest of my life." For better or for worse. They made vows, and maybe he'd made mistakes before but he wasn't going to let the chance to fix it go by.

"Mark, go tell her that. Exactly that." Derek says hoping that after yesterday they'll have reached the breaking point. While he didn't want a repeat of last night, he knew that it opened the door.

Smacking his hand on the table Mark stood up. "I'm going to go tell her." He sprints off to go to Lexie's room.

"Let's see if I can finish my article." Derek mumbles to himself looking back down to start the article over for the third time.

Upstairs, Mark walked into Lexie's room. "Hey," a smile breaks out on her face as she sees him in the room.

Entering the room he takes a seat next to her bed. "Hey how's it going?" Mark wants to reach out and take her hand but he doesn't want to push her yet.

"Well I don't think I need to go for a run, but I'm hanging in there. Oh and Meredith said when I get out of the hospital I can move in with her. Apparently, they've got an extra room." Lexie smiles as she explains her new plan.

Faltering, Mark feels his hopes of them reconciling dwindle. "Oh…" he speaks softly. Wondering if he should say anything else.

Quirking her eyebrows Lexie looks at him. "Oh?" She repeats trying to pull the response out of him. "I thought you'd be happy that I'm not going home to Thatcher?" She's confused by his response.

Wringing his hands together he reaches for his wedding ring. While Lexie wore hers hidden where no one could see, Mark had left his wedding band on his hand throughout every aspect of their separation. Lexie's eyes catch it. The platinum band on his third finger on his left hand. She'd placed it there almost five years ago. "I uhm, I thought that maybe you would want to or that uhm… you could live with me." Mark doesn't know why he's suddenly fumbling over his words like a seventh grader who'd never spoken to a girl before, but he can't stop it.

"No." Her reply comes out quickly and without much thought.

Slowly, he repeats, "No?", questioning her response.

Letting out a breath she begins to ramble. Her words falling out like vomit. "We don't live together. I left you. I know that yesterday I told you that I love you, and I do. But we're still not together right now. If we ever want to find a way to be together again I don't think me just moving back in with you is a good idea." She lets herself take a rare breath before launching into the second part of her ramble. "I have loved you since I was 18. I have basically lived with you since I was 20. I love you. I have loved you for so long, but I don't know who I am without you. We- we lost a baby. We lost a baby and I shut down and you stopped coming home. We fell apart. If we jumped back into being together, and something like that happened again it would destroy me. I can't. I can't do that again Mark."

She wants to just forgive him and go back to how their lives were but she's not there yet.

"Are you ever going to be ready? I know that we fell apart and I have a part in that but I miss you and Lexie I can't stand this." Mark all but pleads with her.

Lexie tries to keep herself calm, not wanting to cry. "I don't know. I want to be. I'm just not there yet."

Dropping his head, Mark realizes that his plans have been pointless. The real decision lay with her. "I'm going to go back to work. I need you to think about what you want, because I love you, and I'm always going to love you, but I can't keep doing this. We made mistakes, I made mistakes, you made mistakes, but we either need to decide to be in this or not. I can't wait forever, because this is killing me Lexie." He gets up, presses a soft kiss to her lips and walks out of the room.

AN: So we had a little bit of fun Derek interacting with our faves, but some drammmma on the Slexie front. Mark finally put his foot down and demanded a decision out of Lexie. Let me know what you thought and drop a review!


	14. Breathe In, Breathe Out

AN: Thanks everyone who's reviewed so far! Can you all believe it's chapter 14 already?

One of the nurses brings Lexie's personal effects bag into her room. While in the ER Callie had cut off her shirt to minimize her movement before they knew the extent of her injuries, they'd slid her pants and jewelry right off. Leaving her with an awkward bag of clothing. During her stay thus far she'd forgotten all about the stuff she'd come in wearing. Suddenly her hand flew to her neck, checking for the chain she wore that clearly had been taken on. Rifling through the bag she all but discards her other belongings until she finds it.

The platinum chain with her wedding band and engagement ring sits at the bottom.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Lexie's hands wrap aboud the two rings. Despite what had just happened with Mark, she couldn't imagine losing them. The entire time since she had left Manhattan the two rings stayed firmly on the chain and around her neck.

"Well, what do I do with you?" Lexie speaks out loud as she fingers the rings.

It seemed so obvious when she married Mark that nothing would separate them. On her first real try in the world, she believed she got lucky. But, what would separating from Mark mean? If she went through with this what kept in him Seattle? Derek? The two obviously were close but Lexie found it hard to believe that Derek would keep Mar here. Would Lexie start dating again? Would she remarry? Have children with someone else?

Would Mark?

The thought stops Lexie in her tracks. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of Mark dating. Of course, he would, she knew with what he looked like he would have no problem gaining the attention of women, but once another woman realized what existed under Mark's hard exterior nothing would stop her from falling in love with him. Just like Lexie had. Shakily placing her free hand on her chest, Lexie felt her breathing and pulse quicken as she pictured Mark engaged, Mark standing in another ceremony, and Mark as a father to children she had no claim to. The panic rose in Lexie as she tried to catch her breath. Trembling, Lexie couldn't stop the images of Mark moving on with someone else ran through her mind, causing her to not even notice the monitors beginning their alarms.

While Lexie panics in her room, Derek sat working on paperwork across from Mark. Although Derek desperately wanted to ask what had happened earlier. All Mark had said as he stormed in and sat down was that he'd told Lexie she needed to make a decision.

Signing his name and completing the chart, Derek drops his pen and looks at Mark. "You want to tell me what happened or do you want to sit here in silence for another hour before you tell me?" Derek asked pointedly. Clearly whatever happened hadn't gone well, and Derek just wanted to know what happened and what he would deal with from his best friend.

Exasperatedly, Mark throws his pen down. "I told her I couldn't do this anymore. I told her that she needed to make a decision because I can't keep doing this. I need to know how she feels and if there's actually any chance. She's going to go live with Meredith when you discharge her." Mark's heart had broken after she explained why she could not and would not live with her. "She told me why she would not live with me and that we had fallen apart." Mark's head drops as he remembers their earlier conversation.

"Mark, she's been through a lot you've got-" Derek stops as his pager goes off and he takes a look at it.

Doctors spent half their lives interrupted so Mark didn't find Derek's actions surprising. As Derek's eyebrows raise in alarm and confusion, Mark feels himself grow on steady. "What is it?" He asks cautiously.

Dazed by the page, Derek stands up. "It's Lexie." He offers by way of explanation. Those words give the two enough reason to take off at a dead sprint.

When they get to Lexie's room, she's having a full blown panic attack. The monitors go off to warn the doctors of the rising heartbeat and nurses flood in and out of the room. By her breathing patterns and the scans Derek had taken this morning, it takes him half a second to realize she's having a panic attack. "I want everyone out now. She's having a panic attack." Dere orders loudly. He watches as everyone stops at his words and leaves the room. "I don't want to sedate her with her injuries. You need to calm her down now before I have to sedate her." Derek announces point-blank to Mark.

Snapping into action, Mark makes a move towards the bed. Forgetting about their earlier argument, he sits carefully by her. "Hey," he starts so kindly and gently that Derek feels like he might need to leave the room to give them a moment.

"I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry." Mark repeats like a mantra as he moves closer to her. Taking one of her hands into hers, he makes eye contact with Lexie. He can see the panic on her face and he knows he has to calm her down before she hurts herself. "I need you to try and breathe with me." He unfolds her hand to place it on his chest when he watches her wedding rings tumble into his hand.

Trying to get over the shock he blinks and places her now empty hand on his chest to regulate her breathing. "You can do it, just match my breathe." He coaxes taking over exaggerated breaths to try and calm her. At first she struggles, but after a minute her breath, albeit ragged matches his.

"You're okay. I've got you. It's okay." Mark coaches. Behind them, once Derek's satisfied with her heart rate he slides out of the room and shuts the room. Leaving the two alone, Derek trusts Mark can get Lexie calmed the rest of the way.

Lexie's hand flex and clinch to take Mark's scrub top into her hand. She can feel herself calming but she's just jarred enough to struggle to calm down the rest of the way. Taking his free hand, Mark runs it through her hair.

With her other hand free, Lexie raises it up to wrap around the back of Mark's head. Pressing their heads together, Lexie feels relief and calm begin to wash over her. Slowly her heart rate returned to normal. The two stay pressed together even after she's calmed down.

Gathering up the strength to speak, Lexie looks at him. "I don't want us to separate. I'm not ready yet. I can try to be, but I'm not there yet. I want to work on it. I don't want to lose you." What she'd said this morning seemed irrelevant now. "I need a little time to deal with what happened, I want us to spend some time together without the pressure of everything falling apart, and I think we should talk to someone."

Feeling his spirit rise as she says this, he knows they're nowhere near in the clear, but it's a start. It's something. "I can work with that. We can do that." He agrees.

Leaning forward, he kisses her softly, quickly before pulling away. "We can do this."

AN: So they're not together. Not yet, but it's a step in the right direction, to say the least. Thanks for all your reviews so far. Drop one now and let me know what you thought!


	15. One

In two weeks since the Thatcher incident, Lexie had moved out of Thatcher's house, into Meredith's and spent her days recovering. While her ribs still had a bit longer to go to heal all the way, she finally had gotten to go back to work. Living at Meredith's house was a change for her, by no means did she find the house perfect but it seemed to fit with her life right now. She had her own room, she didn't love sharing a bathroom, but being around the residents really had helped.

While her and Mark had agreed to start trying to slowly figure things out, she'd asked that they wait until she returned to the hospital to start. As much as she wanted to jump back in and start slowly unpacking everything they had gone through in the past five or six months, they decided together that waiting until her life had some more normalcy before they began to reconcile. So today before Lexie's shift they had their first therapy appointment. They'd found a couple's therapist at the hospital who could see them in a way that worked with their schedule.

For now, to avoid the pressure and gossip of everyone else, the two came to an agreement to remain quiet on the subject. Lexie's rings still hung from the chain on her neck, rather than her fingers, but partially due to work. She couldn't operate or slip gloves on easily while wearing both rings.

Arriving at the hospital earlier than she needed to get there, Lexie changed into scrubs before heading off to their appointment. Getting into the elevator she smiled as she watched Mark get in. "Morning Lex," he greeted her smiling.

"Morning Mark," Lexie smiles back at him. "Is it stupid that I'm nervous? I mean we want to stay together and to make this work and really this should just make us stronger, but I'm still terrified that she'll decide we're awful for each other and we should just leave each other and I don't want to leave you forever." Ever since they'd begun speaking again her rambling had returned to the level he knew so well.

Pulling the stop on the elevator he turns to face her. "I love you. You love me. We've been through a lot and we're just getting help processing it. Nothing will change that. We've been together for almost nine years. It's okay to be nervous, but we're going to be okay." Mark leans forward to kiss her before letting go of the elevator stop. In New York they'd always been affectionate people, hugging and kissing, a hand always on the other one. Slowly, they had begun to welcome more casual touches into their lives.

Once the elevator stops they get out and walk toward the therapist's office. The receptionist waves them right in. "Hello, I'm Doctor CJ Cregg. You must be Mark and Lexie." The doctor is a tall woman with light brown hair, a little older than Mark. Yet, something about her still feels welcoming.

As Doctor Cregg gestures to the couch in front of her the couple takes a seat. "So here's what I'm thinking. You two have scheduled to see me over the course of several weeks. I'd like to just start by easing in and getting a better picture of who you are, both as a couple and individually. You both filled out forms with your history and I looked at those so I don't need an entire recap on your lives, but I want to understand how you operate so that I can help you succeed as a couple. Any questions?" She gives them a moment to respond.

Once they shake their heads she flips open her notebook. "Well let's begin then. So obviously you've got a bit of an age difference between you, I can tell by your scrubs, but why don't you explain how you met." She prompts.

Without thinking about it Lexie's right hand reaches for Mark's as she begins to talk. Their fingers lace together instantly, and it doesn't go unnoticed by the therapist. "I was 18, he was 27. I used a fake ID to go to a bar with my roommate when she ditched me, I met Mark who had also been ditched by his roommate. We spent the entire night talking. We've been together ever since, and we get married just shy of four years after we met, the summer before I started med school." At the memory of meeting him Lexie can't help but to smile.

Nodding, Dr. Cregg prompts. "What did you notice first about each other?"

For a moment Lexie has to ponder, but Mark responds right away. "Her eyes. She looked so bored standing there physically, but I could tell that her mind was somewhere else. Then when I went up to her I remember looking straight into her dark brown eyes." Mark's head tilts to look at Lexie who blushes at his revelation.

"His smirk. I wasn't standing by him at first but I noticed him out of the corner of my eye. I remember thinking he looked like he was up to something and I wanted to know what." In the time she'd known Mark she'd grown to realize his smirk had any number of meanings. Sometimes his smirk meant he was up to something, a plan or a task, other times it meant he was proud of something, she'd even seen it as a cover of what he perceived as weakness. She loved his smirk.

Giving an indication she heard them, the doctor continues to write on her notepad. "I want you both to remember these things. We're going to talk about some hard stuff and sometimes you're going to walk out of here angry, at each other, at me, at yourselves. So I want you two to remember what attracted you to each other initially, and how you thought about it right now." Dr. Cregg explains and they both nod.

Over the next hour they explain their backgrounds, Mark's parentless childhood, Lexie's shifting family, and the more surface level parts of their marriage. "And that's time for today. We've made a good start on the surface. Now next time, I want us to really start digging deeper. We're going to talk about some of the darker stuff. Your homework is to go out together. Go to dinner. Go dancing in a cheesy club. See a movie. Get a drink in a crappy bar. I don't care what the two of you do, but I want you to spend time as a couple together. Now go to work and I'll see you next week." She dismisses them and the two get off the couch, leaving the room.

"See that wasn't as bad as you thought. And it turns out we've got a date now. How long is your shift today?" Mark asks once they gotten into the elevator.

Pressing the button for her floor she smirks and looks at him. "I'm only working 12 hours so I'm done around 8. Why are you asking me out?" Lexie teases as the elevator stops on Mark's floor.

"I'll meet you in the lobby at 8:15! See you tonight Sloan!" Mark said just before the doors open. Stepping out, he turns and smirks at her before walking off.

Laughing, Lexie leans against the wall in the elevator. "Today's going to be a good day." She mutters to herself waiting for her floor.

AN: After alllll the angst I thought our Slexie needed a bit of happiness. But remember, this is Shondaland, so I wouldn't count them completely out yet. Drop me a review and let me know what you thought!


	16. What A Day

AN: This chapter is nothing more than cute fluff. I regret nothing.

By 8:15 Lexie's wiped. Assigned to the code team for the day she spent the entire day running across the hospital trying to bring patients back from the brink of death. Throughout the day she'd barely had a moment to sit down and she's not even standing right now. In the lobby she sits in a chair waiting for Mark. She has no idea what his plan is for tonight, but they're working on spending time together as a couple.

Leaning her head down, she rests it gently on her hand. Slowly, Lexie's eyes begin to close. By the time Mark walks into the lobby 10 minutes later he finds Lexie asleep in the chair. Taking a second, Mark looks at her sleeping form with a smile on his face. "You planning on taking your wife home?" Derek teases as he heads towards the exit.

"Oh I'm planning on it." He calls back before heading over to the chair where Lexie sits. She looks so peaceful that he doesn't want to wake her up at first, just let her stay there sleeping. Gently, he runs a hand over her arm. "Lex... it's time to wake up. You need to go home." He speaks softly not wanting to surprise her.

Sleepily, Lexie's eyes blink open and she stretches upward. "I fell asleep?" She asks dazed as she takes in her surroundings.

Nodding he looks at her. "Yep you fell asleep. Come on I'll take you home. You're definitely not driving like this." From Mark's vantage point he could see Lexie probably wouldn't safely drive home, and he knew if she drove herself home he would just spend all night worrying.

Shaking her head Lexie stands up. "No we're supposed to have our date together." She protests even though she's exhausted.

Tenderly he moves a fallen piece of hair out of her face. "You're clearly exhausted. If we went to dinner would you even make it through ordering a drink?" Mark asks wondering a bit how she's even standing at all today. With running the coding team, there was no way Lexie had more than 15 minutes to sit down or eat throughout today.

"I'm always exhausted. I'm an intern." She points out stubbornly. Interns regularly worked 80 to 100 hour weeks, her exhaustion wasn't new, she'd been tired for months. After losing so many patients today she just wanted to spend time with him, their therapist had made it clear that they needed to work on spending time together as a couple, and Lexie did not see her tiredness as a reason not to do something.

Deciding quickly that dinner reservations he made for them wouldn't work, Mark gets an idea. "She didn't say we had to out. She said to do something. Getting takeout and watching a movie is still something, and then if you fall asleep I don't have to carry you home." He suggests

teasing her. Even if they manage to watch a movie, he really doubts Lexie will manage to stay awake for that long.

"So you'd be willing to get pizza and just watch a movie? Even though we're supposed to go to dinner?" Lexie asks and Mark nods.

Her face says she doesn't believe him as she crosses her eyes to look at him. "Do you remember when you and I had been dating for about two months?" Mark starts causing Lexie to get even more confused at what's going on. She knows she's exhausted, but now that Mark brings up things that happened years ago she can't contain her confusion. "We'd been dating for about two months and I spent basically every minute I wasn't at the hospital with you, and I think I'd been at the hospital for three days straight when we had dinner plans." Mark starts recalling.

-Flashback-

Mark wanted to go home. Three days he'd gotten paged for a 30-car pileup on and just when the carnage finally started to die down he crashed in an on-call room for about two hours before a 48 hour shift started. He missed his bed, he missed his girlfriend, he wanted to leave. More importantly, Mark wanted to go home, invite Lexie over and sleep. Only the two had dinner plans tonight, and he really wanted to take her out.

The moment his shift ends, Mark clocks out and changes. Earlier today he had about fifteen minutes to call Lexie and finalize their plans, she would meet him in the lobby a little bit after his shift ended.

Not spotting Lexie, Mark sits down on a bench and leans his eyes back. Next thing he knows, someone gently shakes him awake. "Babe." The voice says gently and Mark groggily opens his eyes to find Lexie standing in front of him all dressed up.

Smiling softly Mark leans forward and kisses her. "Hi, I missed you." He says his voice laden with sleep.

Instantly Lexie can tell Mark hasn't had more than two hours sleep in days. "I missed you too, and you need to go to bed." She gently says. Even though Lexie had spent all day excited about going to dinner, she really just wanted to spend time with him and right now it seemed like he needed to sleep more than he needed to go to dinner with her.

"I'm fine. Just dozed off a little bit. We've got a reservation and everything." Mark argues as a yawn slips out.

Lexie can't contain the giggle that falls from her lips. From her vantage point Mark had maybe an hour before he slept until tomorrow afternoon, she figured she probably needed to eat

something that didn't come from the hospital cafeteria or the vending machine. "Mark you need to go to bed you're dead on your feet." She points out.

Stubborn as always he tries to argue. "You're all dressed up and everything. Really I'll be okay." The surgical intern had no control over his schedule and he always hated when he had to cancel because of the hospital.

"I just want to spend time with you. We don't have to go out, we'll have plenty of nights for it later on. For now, there's no way you will last through dinner. So we can go to your place, I'll put on your oversized Columbia sweatshirt, you'll put on pajamas, we'll order chinese or pizza or something, and we'll watch a movie. Or you'll watch twenty minutes of one." Lexie teases him. She can tell he's still unsure about her being so calm with all of this so she kisses him softly once before repeating herself. "I just want to spend time with you. I don't care about where or doing what."

Two hours later, they've eaten pizza and sprawled across Mark's bed, some rom-com playing in the background as Mark sleeps wrapped around Lexie.

-End Flashback-

"I made you go home, you didn't want to. We had pizza and beer and you fell asleep wrapped around me." Lexie smiles softly at the memory. Around that time she started to realize that she loved Mark, and she remembers telling him the next month that she thought she had fallen for him.

Throwing his arm around her, he leads her towards the parking lot. "So my place or yours? If we go to mine we can even order room service. We're watching the Yankees game though, because I really don't think you'll last through a movie." Mark suggests.

Yawning again, Lexie leans against him as they walk. "Yours. I haven't seen the infamous hotel room yet." She mocks him as they get to his car.

Not even two hours later, Lexie's head lays on Mark's chest as she wears one of his Columbia t-shirts and boxer shorts, his arm draped protectively over her as she sleeps.

AN: And a little more cute fluff but I couldn't help it! Imagining Mark coaxing a sleepy Lexie home was just too cute to pass up. Drop a review and let me know what you thought!


	17. Closer

"So you didn't come home last night." Meredith starts dropping her lunch tray next to Lexie.

Blushing Lexie swallows her bite before answering. "I went home with Mark last night." She admits knowing what Meredith would easily assume.

Meredith's eyebrows raise in shock. "Really? So you're back together then?" She asks hearing about this for the first time. After what she saw that first day with Lexie running and hiding, Meredith thought the relationship had ended.

Shrugging, Lexie fidgets nervously. "I don't know. We started going to therapy, I want to try, he wants to try, so we're going to see someone. We're talking through things, slowly, very slowly." She emphasizes how slow they've actually gone through everything lately. Together they had almost nine years worth of things to unpack and deal with. While the majority of their time together hadn't been like the year before, they needed to get to a place where they could move forward again

"But you're sleeping together?" Meredith questions.

Shaking her head Lexie quickly answers. "No. We're not sleeping together again. Not right now. Our therapist wants us to start spending time together and acting like a couple again. We had a date planned for last night, but I fell asleep in the lobby waiting for him. He woke me up, took me home, we had dinner, and we watched about the first half of an inning of the Yankees game before I fell asleep." Lexie doesn't feel the need to give her some of the more intimate details. Really she'd spent last night basically laying on top of her husband while she slept.

Meredith balks at Lexie's explanation. She'd expected to hear about how Mark and Lexie spent the entire night having sex. Not that they went home and fell asleep. It seemed _normal_. So married. "So let me get this straight. You had plans. He took you home instead and you just ate dinner and went to sleep? You didn't have sex with your very hot, steamy, husband?" Meredith's clearly shocked by Lexie's sudden shift in her relationship with Mark. "What brought this on?"

If you'd asked Lexie weeks ago if she would have started to work on her relationship with Mark again she doesn't think she would have said yes. But then he showed up. He showed up and he started behaving like the Mark she loved again. "You spend eight years with someone, eight Christmases, eight birthdays, hundreds of late nights, and-" Lexie pauses. "It wasn't like we were cheating on each other, we had a bad six months. A really bad six months, and it just got to be too much. I want to explain. I just want to tell Mark that I'm going to first, are you off tonight? I know we've got tequila at home. So why don't I explain tonight?" She offers. Lexie wants to tell Meredith how all of this happened, she just wanted to run through everything over with Mark.

"Yeah I've got to go check on a patient. I'll see you at home." Meredith suddenly has an idea and she needs to go find Derek. More importantly, she wants to give Lexie a little space to figure out how to tell her. Always one to block things off Meredith figures giving Lexie a little space will make things easier for her.

Finishing her lunch, Lexie gets up to go find Mark. Checking the OR board Lexie doesn't see Mark's name and assumes she can find him in his office. Knocking she opens the door and pops her head in.

Lifting his head up from his notes, Mark smiles when he sees her in the doorway. "Hey what's up?" He asks.

Shutting the door behind her Lexie wrings her hands nervously. "I need to talk to you about something." She starts and Mark can feel himself start to get nervous. Clearly whatever Lexie needless to say is bothering her and he doesn't like that.

"Okay… go ahead." He debates offering her to sit down but he knows that she'll either take a seat or pace while she gets whatever is on her mind off of it.

Trying to calm herself Lexie takes a deep breath. "I want to tell Meredith about what happened in New York. I was talking to her and I started to tell her about how I slept at your place yesterday and she asked what happened and I just wanted to explain but I don't want to go through what happened with her before talking to you." She gently starts. "Okay so-" Lexie falters trying to start.

"Lex whatever it is go ahead and start. I'm not going to be mad. Really if you want to tell your sister about what happened go ahead." He interjects trying to make it easier for her.

Nodding she tries to start again. "I love you and we're working on everything. I just want to preface this with that. I want to tell her about everything. That we stopped speaking, that I shut down, and that, and that we lost a baby." Lexie feels her eyes start to fill with tears. "I know that we haven't finished talking through all of it, but I want to talk about it with my sister. If it makes you uncomfortable I won't, and I'm going to keep talking about it with you and with Dr. Cregg but I wanted to run all of this by you first and make sure it's okay." Lexie feels awkward and uncomfortable explaining all of this but she didn't want to cross any lines.

Getting up Mark walks over to Lexie and wraps his arms around her. Holding her for a moment he stands there before taking a step back. Leaving his arms on her, Mark looks in her eyes before he talks. "Lex you can talk about it with her, all of it. I know that what happened wasn't what we wanted and we're dealing with it. And if part of you dealing with it means that you tell another person then go ahead." He says and she can feel herself relax.

"So you're not going to be upset if tonight my sister and I go get drunk and I tell her everything?" She asks one more time just to be sure.

"Really I'm not. I'll probably go get drinks with Derek or something." He leans down and kisses her once to emphasize his point.

Leaning into him she places her head on his chest and wraps her arms around his midsection. "We're really going to be okay aren't we?" Lexie ass almost in disbelief of something that had seemed so impossible only a few weeks ago.

"I believe so Lex."

AN: Aw they think they're gonna be okay! Sure would be a shame if... someone... had some Shonda plotlines up her sleeves. Let me know what you thought!


	18. The Story

"So - tequila?" Meredith jokes as her and Lexie walk in the house.

Laughing Lexie walks into the kitchen. "I'll grab the limes from the fridge." Opening the fridge she grabs a couple of limes and a knife to cut them with. Grabbing the salt with her free hand, Lexie moves into the living room. Taking a seat on the couch Lexie begins to cut the limes.

When Meredith returns she places two glasses on the table and a bottle of tequila. Both of them toss a drink back before Lexie starts. "How do you want me to tell you? Should I just tell you everything or do you want to ask questions?" Lexie starts. She knows that telling Meredith will make her feel better in the end, but she founds starting difficult.

"I know you got married after you graduated undergrad, and clearly you left him. Just start wherever you're most comfortable." Meredith never pried as a person, she'd always remained closed off. A few months ago she'd never have considered asking Lexie any of these questions, but now she wanted to know what had caused Lexie to make such a sharp shift in her life.

Tossing back another drink, Lexie takes a deep breath before starting. She knew where she needed to start with this story but that didn't make it any easier. "Last year Mark was up for a potential promotion, they were trying to decide if he would take over the head of plastics position, and we were trying to decide if I would do my residency at Mt. Sinai or if we wanted to go somewhere else…"

-Flashback-

" _Are you really sure that you want to work at Mt. Sinai? I don't want you to pick a hospital just because I'm there. I'm good I can go anywhere. If you want to go somewhere else, plastics brings in a lot we can go somewhere else." Mark asks for about the thousandth time in the last two weeks._

 _Groaning, Lexie threw her textbooks down. "Yes! I want to work at Mt. Sinai. I like our apartment here, I love our lives in New York. Now I would really like to finish studying for this exam. If you would stop worrying about this I could study and then we could go to bed but you've insisted on being annoying." She says exasperated. For the last month she'd started getting offers from various hospitals. With every single one Mark had asked her if she really wanted to work at the same hospital he did._

 _For all of five minutes Mark stays silent. Naively, Lexie takes that to mean she's going to study without him interrupting her. Within moments of her finishing her chapter Mark's voice pops up from the couch again. "I'm just saying I don't want you to pick a hospital just because I'm there. I mean you're getting in to every program in the country and Mt. Sinai is in the top 5 but you're probably going to also get in to one and two and I don't want you to feel stuck in a year because you picked somewhere that would make me happy." He starts again and Lexie stands up in irritation._

" _You're an idiot! When have I ever done anything I haven't wanted to do? Never. So would you just shut up. You're driving me insane Mark. I have told you every single day for weeks that I want to stay here. If you had listened ANY of those times you would know that." Slamming her books shut, Lexie begins to pack up her textbooks. "I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand that I love you and I like our lives and I don't want to make another change next year. So while you sit there and ask the same question, and instead of me throwing shit at you for asking again. I'm going to go take a bath." Lexie all but storms into the bathroom. Very rarely did they fight, and this fight had come up a couple of times._

 _Slamming the bedroom and bathroom doors, Lexie starts the bath. Undressing herself. Lexie climbs in the tub. Laying her head back she closes her eyes. Lately it felt like her temper changed at the drop of a hat lately, and she couldn't quite figure out why. Blaming it on stress from the end of med school, Lexie tries to relax. She hated fighting with Mark, it made her nauseated._

 _It takes about fifteen minutes, but she hears the door to the bathroom softly open. Lexie doesn't have to open her eyes to know that Mark had entered the bathroom. "I don't want to have the same fight again Mark," she says drained._

 _Crossing the difference, Mark kneels next to the tub and ran a hand over the few fallen strands. "I'm sorry I keep bringing it up. I just- I don't want you to resent me a year from now." He says softly._

 _Opening her eyes slowly she looks up at him. "I love you. If I was going to resent you I would have done so by now. I'm not picking a hospital because you work there. Yes I would love to work with you, but I want to work at Mt. Sinai. It's a great hospital, but if we keep having this argument then I'm going to go work in LA." She finishes with a joke. Lexie didn't want to go anywhere._

" _I'm happy, right. Here." Lexie says reaching up to grab him by shirt and pull him into the tub. Laughing, she pulls him against her._

 _Surprised by her motion, Mark lets himself get pulled into the tub. Laughing he wraps his arms around her. Not caring that he's soaking wet._

-End Flashback-

"So what you two kept fighting?" Meredith asks confused.

Lexie shook her head. "Not exactly." She knocks two back in succession before moving onward with the next part.

-Flashback-

 _A few weeks later Lexie found herself throwing up on three consecutive mornings. On morning number four, Mark came storming into the bathroom. "Okay that's it. I'm taking you to the hospital. Something's clearly wrong here."_

 _Sighing, Lexie lifted her head from the toilet. She had an idea of why she had spent several mornings praying to the porcelain gods. "Mark I'm late." She offers by way of explanation._

 _Flabbergasted at the idea of her going to her classes instead of staying home when she's clearly sick. "I don't give a shit if you're late to classes Lex. You're obviously sick and something's wrong so we're going to go to the hospital." He can't understand how she doesn't see the problem he sees._

 _Rolling her eyes, Lexie repeats herself. "No Mark. I'm late." She emphasizes the late and he still looks at her again. Shaking her head, Lexie stands up and walks over to her side of the sink. Bypassing her husband, she reaches into the drawer and pulls out the box she'd finally gathered the courage to purchase yesterday._

 _Raising the box up to him, she watches his face while he processes the information. "You're late." Mark repeats._

 _Nodding Lexie gestures towards the bedroom. "If you'd uh, give me a moment to get this set?" She asks pulling the box out._

" _Right. I'll be out there." Mark points towards the door. Shutting the door behind him, he waits in the hallway._

 _In the bathroom Lexie pees on the stick and pulls her pants up. Opening the door she moves to sit on the bed. Stick in hand. "So now we wait, 3-5 minutes." She instructs, setting the timer. Mark moves to sit next to her._

 _They're both too nervous to speak, but Lexie can't stop from bouncing her leg. With a minute left, Lexie breaks the silence. "I know it's earlier than we planned, but if I am, pregnant. Then we'll make it work." Lexie says wrapping her hand around Mark's._

 _Nodding, he agrees with her. "If you're pregnant, then we'll be parents. I love you, and I'll love whatever kids we have." He agrees._

 _The timer goes off and both suck in a breath._

" _So it looks like we're going to be parents. I love you." Lexie says with a smile on her face._

" _I love you too." Mark says leaning forward and kissing her._

-End Flashback-

"Pregnant? You clearly haven't been pregnant the entire time I've known you. So what happened then Lexie?" Meredith asks.

Lexie pours them both another drink and tips hers back.

"I had a miscarriage." She says point blank.

AN: And that's chapter 18! Sorry this one took so long, it was hard to write. Now they're not fully done recapping everything yet. So look forward to more of Lexie and Meredith in the next chapter. Drop a review and let me know what you thought!


	19. Breakable

AN: So this chapter has some darker stuff. Just a warning!

"Pregnant? You clearly haven't been pregnant the entire time I've known you. So what happened then Lexie?" Meredith asks.

Lexie pours them both another drink and tips hers back.

"I had a miscarriage." She says point blank. "Mark was the best expectant father. The day we found out I went to class and when I came home he'd bought the baby the cutest little Yankees onesie, and a calendar where we could circle the due date. We were ecstatic."

She pauses, taking a moment to relive the memory of Mark coming home with the onesie. He'd been so excited and proud of the gift. "We even debated if I should consider deferring my acceptance to Mt. Sinai for a year. So that I wouldn't get behind. When I was 11 weeks it happened."

-Flashback-

" _So how do you feel on your first official day post-med school?" Mark asked walking into the apartment and kissing his wife as she sat on the couch._

 _Yesterday Lexie had graduated from Columbia, and this morning her parents left. "Well I learned there is nothing on daytime tv. Literally nothing." She'd had morning sickness a little worse than usual this morning so she'd decided to take it easy._

 _Plopping down next to her, Mark pulled her gently into his lap, instantly Lexie snuggles into Mark. "Feeling better?" He asks one hand absentmindedly going to her hair._

 _Nodding, Lexie can feel herself relax. "Now that you're here I feel a lot better. How was work? Any exciting cases?" She asks, eyes drooping slightly. Mark had gotten home later than he wanted when he'd gotten called into surgery._

" _No but a house fire had me doing skin grafts for a while. Why don't we go to bed?" He suggests and Lexie nods in agreement. When they climb into bed, she wraps herself around him as they fall asleep._

 _Hours later Lexie wakes up with a sharp pain in her abdomen. Her eyes jerk open and she flips the covers back to realize that there's liquid pooling between her legs. "Mark wake up." She says shoving her husband awake._

 _Mark's eyes fly open right away at the sound of Lexie's voice. "What's wrong?" He asks sitting up and wiping the sleep out of his eyes._

" _I'm bleeding. A lot." She says choking back on the tears she feels threatening to fall. Everything snaps into motion then, Mark moves quickly, getting their things before shuffling her out of the apartment and calling a cab to the hospital._

 _Five hours later Lexie's had a D &C and been given a referral to see her regular doctor at the end of the week. She listens vaguely as the doctor gives her discharge instructions, hoping that Mark's listening enough for the both of them. Once she's finally given instructions, Mark takes her home. Having called Mrs. Shepherd earlier in the evening, he knows the bed has been cleaned and there's no trace of what happened earlier._

" _Do you want anything Lex?" Mark asks softly._

 _Shaking her head, Lexie just walks into their room and climbs into their bed. Lexie waits for the tears to start falling, but she just feels numb._

-End Flashback-

"After that, I shut down. Just as it seemed like maybe things could get back to normal. My mom died. I was hard to deal with, I barely spoke or did anything. Mark stopped coming home. We fought a few times, but we weren't speaking. We didn't know how to deal with it. So I left. I ran." Lexie explains. Tipping back another shot they've sufficiently passed the point of tipsy.

Meredith nods, understanding the urge to run when things get hard. It seemed that trait was genetic. "So now you're all back with McSteamy and trying to make it work?" she asks with a bit of a slur.

Lexie can't help the smile that breaks out on her face at the thought of Mark. "We're working on it. What about you and what is it- McDreamy? Are you going to try and make it work?" Lexie asks. Over the years she witnessed Derek with Addison and having seen him with Meredith she knew that Derek loved her in a way he hadn't loved before.

Shrugging Meredith poured herself another drink. "I want to be with him, I just need to deal with some things involving him and our father first. Now we're doing this clinical trial together. It's going to be okay I think." She explains and Lexie nods, maybe Meredith wasn't ready to explain yet, but she felt pretty confident she would learn the whole truth soon.

The ring of Lexie's phone breaks through their drunken reverie. Taking a glance at the caller id she giggles when she sees Mark's name. "Ooh it's your husband." Meredith leers as Lexie flips it open.

"Husband-man!" Lexie yells unable to control her laughter.

" _Hi Lexie - how much have you had to drink?"_

Shrugging it takes a moment before Lexie realizes that Mark can't see her response. "I've had some tequilas. Meredith's had some tequilas. Are you still with McDreamy?"

" _Yeah he's still here with me, I'm about to head home though and just wanted to check in with you and see how your night went."_

Drunken Lexie finds this about the nicest thing. "Aw you're so nice. You should come here when you're all done there." She suggests noticing Meredith's eyebrows raise.

" _Lex I'm not sure... "_

Pouting she cuts him off. "I spent all night talking about you, I would like to go to bed with you soon so I'll see you when you get here. Bye love you." Lexie snaps her phone shut before he can even respond.

Watching all of this, Meredith wonders if this is how they always were "So you just told him what to do? And he'll do it?" She asks baffled.

Realizing how strange this must have looked, Lexie began to explain. "Mark is the most stubborn man I know but he loves me. So instead of us arguing about it for 20 minutes I just cut out the middleman." She explained.

Twenty minutes later, Meredith's just about to head to bed when they hear a knock on the door. Having sufficiently drank a little more than than they should have, Lexie giggles and goes to get him.

"Goodnight Lexie!" Meredith calls taking off for her bedroom. Lexie calls goodnight back before going to answer the door.

Swinging the door open she can't keep the smile off her face as she sees Mark standing there. "Hi McSteamy." She says jumping onto him and wrapping her legs around his waist.

Surprised, Mark doesn't stumble as he catches her. "I think you had more tequila than you let on." He remarks as he closes and locks the door behind them.

Shrugging, Lexie kisses him hello. "You taste like tequila," she remarks baffled by this and Mark lets out a deep throaty laugh.

"I don't think that it's me... come on we're gonna put you to bed." He gently coaxes. Deciding not to put her down and deal with shepherding a drunk person up the stairs, Mark continues to carry her, remembering her saying something about living in the attic. Thankfully Lexie had already put herself in sweatpants, so he just has to lay her down in the bed.

Setting her down, he toes off his own shoes before climbing in next to her. "I'm so happy we started working things out. I love you." Lexie mymbles before falling straight asleep.

Smiling, Mark lays his head down.


	20. Enchantment

AN: I'm skipping over the Rose plot line because, well, I find her annoying. Good enough of a reason?

The clinical trial had come from something Meredith suggested, a study on inoperable tumors pointed her towards this research. Always looking for a reason to spend time with Meredith and loving neurosurgery, Derek had signed on more easily than he probably should have. The FDA told them fifteen patients and they had lost thirteen so far. Thirteen. Although all of the patients had terminal diagnoses that didn't make it any easier to witness.

Today patients fourteen and fifteen were scheduled. To make matters even worse they'd fallen in love with each other during support group meetings. Could they make the changes necessary to the cocktail to keep them both alive? For once Derek had no idea. All day he'd debated over pulling the strings and telling Meredith they were done with this. For some reason he couldn't, every time they got a little bit closer, and Derek couldn't avoid the sinking feeling that his potential relationship status remained tied to the trial. If it failed, he and Meredith failed. If it worked, so could he and Meredith.

The bottle of champagne in the staff fridge taunted him every time they operated. Another surgery. Another failure. Another growth of distance between him and Meredith.

Pouring over the data he'd gathered from the last patient, he'd paged Meredith to come take a look at everything.

Knocking, Meredith opens the door to the office. "You paged me?" She asks even though there's no question as to whether or not he'd paged her. They both knew he had.

Holding out the chart he placed it down across from him. "Looking at our data from the other trial attempts I want to change a few things before we try with Jeremy tonight, and since we're trying with Beth after I want to make sure we've got a handle on everything before we go in there." Derek explains pointing to the patient charts and tables of data he's sprawled out.

Reading through everything, Meredith makes a few notes on things she thinks should change. While some doctors majored in biology in undergrad, Meredith had majored in chemistry. Giving her a different take at some of the levels they had access to. "What about if we made changes here and here, by 2 and 4 percent respectively?" She suggests and Derek checks the math.

Pondering for a moment he realizes her calculations are right. More precise than his. "I think that'll make the difference." Derek agrees. "We've also got six hours between him and Beth to figure this out if we need to make changes." Not only did they have a patient limit they also had a time crunch that set them up to move quickly. The surgery had to start before midnight.

Meredith agrees and stays uncharacteristically silent for a minute. "Do you need anything else from me or will I just see you when Jeremy goes into pre op?" She asks.

Shaking his head, Derek realizes he has no reason to keep her here with him. "No I'll see you this afternoon." He says and Meredith takes that as her take to leave.

While Derek sat pome tiny their trial and what it meant for them, Meredith's mind did the same thing as she went to go find Lexie. Going downstairs where the residents and interns often sat charting, she finds Lexie in hour 36 of a 48 hour shift.

"How'd you know that it was worth it with Mark?" Meredith asks.

Raising her head Lexie looks confused. "What?" She asks trying to understand what's going on. She assumes that whatever happened had to do with Derek, but otherwise she really had no idea.

Pacing in front of the gurney where Lexie sat, Meredith still tried to formulate her thoughts. "When you decided that you wanted to try with Mark again. How'd you know that you wanted to be with him? That it was worth it?" Meredith asks still not giving Lexie a lot of information to figure out what Derek had done to warrant this reaction.

Pondering for a moment on how to tackle this and calm Meredith down. "Did you know Mark tried to break up with me once while we were dating?" Lexie asks and Meredith stops confused.

"What? The man who moved across the country for you and called you every day for almost four months because he was worried about you tried to dump you?"

Although it hadn't been funny at the time, Lexie almost wanted to laugh at it now. "About a week before his intern exam. He'd been at the hospital for probably 90 hours straight, he was studying, he felt tired and older, and he tried to dump me." She explains with a shrug.

Still not completely following, Meredith listened intently. "And so what'd you do?" She asked taking a seat next to Lexie.

-Flashback-

" _Lexie we need to talk." Mark says pulling his head out his textbooks. With her exams coming up and his intern exam, most of their time together had revolved around studying or sleeping, especially since he'd tried to put in as many hours as possible lately. Just this morning he'd come home from a 96-hour shift, and hadn't slept._

 _Putting her pens down Lexie closes her book to look at him. "What's up?" She asks and it kills Mark to have to do this. He loved her so much, but the more he thought about it the less it made sense. He had 9, almost 10 years on her age wise. What would happen when she realized he wasn't as great as he had managed to act like and she left him for someone her own age? What would happen if they ever got married and tried to have kids?_

 _Clearing his throat he speaks slowly. "So I've had a great five months with you, but I'm about to start my residency and my hours aren't going to lessen up any time in the near future. Not to mention you're so young, I think it would be best if we, uh, if we stopped seeing each other." He suggests his eyes dropping to the floor._

 _Raising her eyebrows in shock, Lexie looks at him skeptically. She can feel the panic rising in her system. "So you don't want to be with me anymore?" She repeats trying to process this._

" _If this week has shown me anything it's that our lives are so different. You've got a lot ahead of you, and a lot to figure out. I really think we should break up. Lexie I'm so much older than you, and I'm going to be a resident I think it's time we ended things before we got too attached." This time Mark's voice has more of an air of finality in it._

 _Derek had warned Lexie earlier in the day that he'd had to physically put Mark on the correct subway to get home because he didn't have anymore mental space to process non-medical things. That didn't stop her from raising her voice. "Before we get too attached? Mark I basically spend every night you're not at the hospital here, and we said I love you. I think it's safe to say we're pretty attached." She knows arguing with him is probably pointless, that an exhausted Mark really never thought logically, but that doesn't stop her from arguing._

 _Standing up, Mark raises his voice. Something he never does to Lexie. Gesticulating with his hands he begins to speak. "Lexie I was at the hospital for 96 hours straight! You didn't have class today! How could we ever expect this to work long term. Not to mention I'm nine years older than you! What happens when you're ready to have kids at 30 and I'm pushing 40? What happens when I retire almost a full decade before you? I think we should break up." He finishes by planting his hands on his hips and looking right at her._

 _By now, Lexie's about 90% sure that he's just dead on his feet and projecting panic about his intern test onto her. Taking a shaky breath, Lexie packs her backpack and ignores the tears in her eyes. "I think, that you were at the hospital for 96 hours straight. You're exhausted, clearly. So I'm going to go home. You're going to go to bed, and after you've slept for 8 hours, if you still want to dump me then you know where to find me." Zipping her backpack up she presses a kiss to his cheek before walking out the door to go to her dorm._

-End Flashback-

"He lasted 18 hours. He had two days off since he'd maxed out his hours, and the next day after he'd basically slept for the whole time he showed up at my dorm apologizing repeatedly." Lexie almost wanted to laugh at the memory of Mark apologizing for taking his exhaustion out on her.

While Meredith liked the story she still doesn't entirely get what the point is. "So you almost broke up but he was tired? How did that help you?" She asks still needing more information.

Looking Meredith straight in the eye she begins to explain why. "When you love them, you realize you can overlook the stupid shit they do. Now Mark does a decent amount of stupid things, trying to dump me was one of them. I knew though, that I would rather put up with his bad ideas and decisions, and learn to check the toilet seat before sitting down, then go try to be happy with someone else. It doesn't have to be perfect. Mark and I are really working on ours, but I'd rather work through it with him" Lexie says a small smile growing on her face. "If you feel that way about Derek, that you'd want to deal with all his bad decisions and weirdness instead of someone else's, then you know it's worth it."

Getting up, Meredith realizes that she finally knows what to do. "Thank you Lex. Thank you." She says before running off.

Before she can reply, Meredith's run off and left Lexie thinking about her husband.

AN: And that's a wrap on chapter 20! Look at that! 20 chapters! Now it seems like Meredith might have an idea up her sleeve as to what to do to be happy with Derek again! Let me know what you thought and drop a review!


	21. Keep Me Warm

AN: This chapter is highly based off the season 4 finale, and yes I know that I've jumped around a bit with plotlines but you can't mess with this episode being pivotal. Plus it's AU so things can change.

Jeremy died during the surgery. The moment his monitors started going off Meredith knew exactly what needed to change. For a few months they had spent all this time researching and trying to figure everything out, and Meredith suddenly knew. Once they get out of surgery she explains to Derek what they needed to change before going to inform Beth that Jeremy died.

"If you don't want the surgery we'll understand." Derek says softly in a way that makes Meredith's heart melt. He's so good with kids, so good with patients in general that Meredith feels herself turn to mush.

Sucking in a deep breath, Beth looks at them both pointedly. "You've figured out what's wrong?" She asks. Despite an age of 17, Beth appeared wiser than both Meredith and Derek.

Nodding, Meredith jumps in. "We believe we've figured what we're doing wrong, but that doesn't mean we're right. There are no clinical trials out there though." Meredith says.

"I want the surgery," Beth says without a moment's hesitation. Meredith and Derek watch as her parents react in shock.

Beth's dad is quick to interject. "Maybe we should take some time and think about it. Take the night, maybe take you home." He offers trying to stall his daughter. From the vantage point of Meredith and Derek they can see how the parents would want to keep their daughter at home for as long as possible.

Shaking her head furiously, Beth cuts in again. "I'm going to die. I'm going to die either way. I want a chance to live. This is my best shot. Mom, Dad, if you take me home I'll just die. I'm 17, and I want to live." Beth pleads. "Do the surgery, tonight. I'll be the lucky one. I can feel it." Beth says and her parents nod in agreement.

Derek all but storms out of the room and Meredith can feel him grow irritated with her. "She's grieving and you pushed her into the surgery." Derek spat at her.

Seeing it from the other viewpoint, Meredith butts heads with him. They're both stubborn and there's no backing down once they've gotten here. "She is going to go home and die. Letting her do that when she wants to fight, when she wants a chance to live is a failure on our part. She knows what she's doing, and you're giving her the best shot she could possibly have."

Whatever led Derek to push back on her like this clearly had nothing to do with Beth or Jeremy, she knew it had to do with her. "Because of you today I will kill a fifteenth person. Because all we do is kill things." He slams the chart shut and storms off.

Swallowing the lump in her throat Meredith goes to scrub in. While she scrubs in she sees Derek come in and start talking to the patient. Finishing scrubbing she steps in the OR to catch the end of what Derek says to Beth.

"Come on what are you scared?" Beth provokes him, her breath quiet. Meredith feels almost like she should move away from the scene and give Beth a moment with her doctor.

As Derek admits "Yes I am." Meredith's system goes into shock for a moment. Never had she heard Derek admit so blatantly to his fears. She almost wanted to jump in on the conversation.

"Me too so let's just leap. Okay?" Beth admits and prompts a smile from Derek.

The McDreamy smile prominent on his face she sees the bit of sparkle go back into Derek's eyes. "Okay." He agrees, taking Beth's hand for a moment before they put her under. "It's a beautiful day to save lives, everyone." His voice rings through the OR before they begin operating.

Beth makes it through surgery. Hours later she wakes up, and they realize the tumor has shrunk. It worked. Meredith sees the tumor shrinking first, but Derek witnesses Beth waking up to find out it really did work.

Running through the locker room Meredith goes looking for the bottle of champagne they'd hidden months ago, only to not find it. Impulsively, she makes a decision.

"Lexie! I need your help. Get changed." she yells into the intern locker room. Not even five minutes later Lexie's dressed and standing outside of the locker room.

"You want to do _what?_ " Lexie basically yells in disbelief once Meredith has explained.

An hour later they're standing in a field, which Lexie learned to be the land Derek purchased in his post-Addison affair haze. Candles in jars and glasses in one hand, a lighter in another they layout what she makes to be a house. In a few places, Lexie has to explain to Meredith that houses don't have that shape, but they make it work. "So you're going to tell him you love him? That you want to be with him?" Lexie asks as they finish up the house outline.

Meredith stands in the middle of the candles, nodding. "He told me he wanted to build a house with me. I don't build houses. So, we're doing this." She gestures around her. Every inch of Meredith hated corny gestures like this, but she knew how much Derek loved them, and this was it. She wanted to be with him till the end and for once she understood the point of the big gesture in explaining to him why she had done it, why she'd worked to get all whole and healed and to be with him.

"Well, I'm going to go. Good luck with this." Lexie says turning to go walk to her car. Driving away, Lexie watches Meredith begin pacing around. For Meredith's sake, she hopes Derek comes quickly.

Thirty minutes later finds Meredith pacing around the house of candles. "Stupid, corny, idiotic, I cannot believe I did this. Stupid, loser, son of a... I could be at home instead of, ugh, stupid brain man…" She kicks at the grass before turning over and pacing more. How could she have thought this would have worked for her? Things like this never worked out for her, she should have known better.

Walking up, Derek watches Meredith curse at him. Champagne in hand he can't avoid smiling as he watches her curse him and her out. "Meredith." He calls, alerting her to his presence.

Stopping her cursing, Meredith's head snaps right up. Suddenly she's filled with rage. "Where have you been?! I've been waiting and waiting for you! And I did this stupid, embarrassing, humiliating, corny thing. And I was just gonna tell you that, this over here is our kitchen, and this is our living room, and over there that's the room where our kids could play. I had this whole thing about I was gonna build us a house, but I don't build houses because I'm a surgeon! And now I'm here feeling like a lame ass loser. I got all whole and healed and you don't show up. And now it's all ruined because you took so long to come home! And I couldn't even find that bottle of champagne." Her anger fades in the middle of her tirade when she remembers why she's doing this.

Raising his arm, Derek holds up the bottle to her with a smile on his face. Maybe she thought it was stupid, but he had never loved her more. "This the kitchen? Living room? - a little small. I think the view's much better from here. And that's the room where the kids are going to play? Where's our bedroom?" Walking around the house he takes a look towards her and closes the distance.

Meredith rants again as he gets close to her. "I'm still mad at you and I don't know if I trust you, I wanna trust you, but I don't know if I do. So I'm just gonna try, I'm gonna try and trust you. Because I believe that, we can be extraordinary together rather than ordinary apart and I wanna be…" Derek cuts her off with a kiss.

The house of candles flickers around them as his hands tangle in her hair.

AN: I cut out of the very end of the scene because with Rose not a thing here then we don't really need to have the part of the scene where he leaves. That's Chapter 21! Drop a review and let me know what you think!


	22. The Anthem

Once Lexie drives away from Meredith and the house of candles, she hesitates where to go for a moment. Of course she should go home, and a voice that sounded eerily like her mother reminded her that nothing good ever came from a decision made while tired. Despite all of this, Lexie does not want to go home to the glorified frat house, she wants to go _home_ , and her home doesn't have residents eating all the cereal.

The light at the intersection flicks from red to green, and instead of making her usual left, she makes an impulse decision to turn right. Five blocks later she sees the sign for the archfiend and pulls in. Pulling from her memory, she parks the car, walks in and gets in the elevator pressing floor 11.

Her heart pounds in her chest as the doors on the elevator slide open. While she should feel shakier than she's ever felt, something makes Lexie feel confident in her decision. Walking down the hallway she can't help but to think of her life with Mark. Almost nine years.

\- - - - Flashback - - - - -

" _Are you sure you want to do this?" Thatcher asked her for the 20th time today. Maybe her father didn't understand why Lexie wanted to get married so young, but she had never felt so sure of anything in her life._

 _Letting out a breath Lexie turns to her father. "I love him. I know I'm young, but when I look at him I see my life. I see us having kids, I see Christmas and New Years and Sunday mornings. I don't want to feel this way about anyone else, and I know he feels the same. I'm sure." Nothing in Lexie's voice breeds a lack of confidence._

" _Plus," she starts laughing, "We're about ninety seconds from walking down the aisle. I'm here." She jokes as the processional starts._

 _They'd opted to get married in Central Park, neither one of them having any particular religious affiliations or a desire to get married in a church. As she walks down the aisle on the slightly overcast day, Lexie knows they've made the perfect choice._

 _Her eyes catch with Mark's and her heart stops._

 _This is it. This is the man she wants to spend her whole life with. No questions asked._

 _The look on Mark's face makes her heart melt. He's staring at her like he's the most beautiful thing he's ever looked at. Somehow she feels naked and comfortable all at the same time._

" _Hi." She says as they get there and she lets go of her fathers arm to take Mark's hand._

 _Unable to control the smile on his face, Mark smiles back. "Hi. You look amazing." It takes every inch of self control he has left in his body to not just instantly kiss her._

 _The wedding passes in a blur, Lexie knows she's responding at the right moments and that Mark answers in the right moments. They'd chosen to use traditional vows, and as Lexie struggles to focus on anything but Mark she's suddenly glad._

" _You may now kiss the bride." The officiator says and Mark leans in to kiss her softly._

 _\- - - - - End Flashback - - - - -_

Turning down the hallway, Lexie heads to the room she's only visited once. Suddenly, everything she'd cared about before regarding their relationship stopped mattering. She just wanted to feel happy again, and she wanted to feel that way with Mark. He made her happy, and she wanted to spend every day for the rest of her life feeling like that.

Yes, they'd gone through a bad patch, but Lexie knew that they could and had worked through it. Together they had done their best to make sure that her leaving wouldn't serve as the of all for them.

Lexie moves rapidly through the hallway until she gets to his room, not wanting to lose her nerve.

Raising a fist to the door, Lexie has no idea what waits for her inside. Little does she know that if she had just opened the door she would see Mark standing on the otherwise pacing back and forth trying to find the easiest way to tell Lexie he wanted to just be together, to stop with this back and forth almost togetherness they found themselves currently stuck in.

He wanted his wife back, he wanted to kiss her goodnight and good morning everyday, not just on the nights she needed him. He wanted to be there when she got home after a 48 hour shift, dead on her feet, and when she got paged at 3 a.m. for an emergency. He wanted to help her study for her intern exam and make her breakfast because they both knew Lexie in the kitchen was dangerous for everyone involved.

Making a decision, Mark turns towards the door, keys in hand as he knows what he needs to do next. Right now he needs to go find Lexie and tell her that he's ready to just be together again.

At that moment, on the other side of the door, Lexie knocks.

Confused, Mark goes to answer the door. He feels his breath get knocked out of him as he sees Lexie standing there.

"Hi." He says breathless.

"Hi." She echoes.

AN: That's NOT the end of the story! But look! They're back together! Drop a review and let me know what you thought!


	23. Everything's Coming Up Roses

Standing there, Lexie looks at Mark before taking a step into his hotel room. Turning to face him, she watches the confusion on his face as he looks back and forth between the hallway and Lexie. "Tonight I helped Meredith set up this big romantic gesture for her to tell Derek that she'd gotten all whole and healed to be with him. The entire time all I could think of was you." Lexie admits.

Still baffled by the fact Lexie stands in front of him, Mark remains stunned in his place. Somehow he manages to swing the door shut. Through all of this Lexie keeps talking. "I know we probably need to keep talking to our therapist and even then seeing her sometimes is probably good, but I love you. I love you so much that it physically hurts. You're it for me and I don't want to be without you ever again. I want us to live together. I want you to be there when I wake up and when I go to bed, I want you to have to coax me home after three days at the hospital. Most of all I just want you." Tears develop in Lexie's eyes as she speaks.

Taking a step towards her, Mark lets out the smallest of breaths. "Lex…" The weight he didn't realize he still had carried around for the last six months lifted off his chest. She wanted him, she wanted to be with him.

Cutting Mark off, Lexie keeps going. In her mind she's so worried that he will have changed his mind. Maybe he doesn't want her anymore and has moved on from wanting to be with her and realized that he could move on and find someone else. "I get that I spent all this time telling you no, and that I had wanted to move on. But I don't. I want to be with you, and I hope it's not too late because I love you, and we have all this history and god the thought of another six months without you makes the air disappear out of my lungs."

Even if Mark tried to jump in, while Lexie still has air in her lungs there's nothing that will stop her. "Really I understand if you-" Mark takes matters into his own hands and kisses her.

Without a moment's hesitation Lexie kisses him back before she can process that she's been cut off from speaking. Pulling back, Mark looks her straight in the eye. "I love you too. I have loved you the entire time I've loved you. I want to be with you. I don't want us to be separated anymore either. Okay?" Mark's hands still haven't moved off Lexie since he kissed her, but god he loved her. If whatever had happened between Meredith and Derek made Lexie realize that she wanted to be with him again, then he felt eternally grateful.

"Really? I haven't ruined our chances?" She asks nervous that she'd pushed too far.

All but laughing, Mark shakes his head. "No. Lexie I'm so in love with you the thought of being without you seems impossible. Trust me. You haven't ruined us." He promises finding the idea absolutely insane. On what planet could he not love her? Mark didn't see that as an option. Even if she'd left and divorced him, she'd probably still own him.

Placing an arm around her, he looks her head in the eyes. "I want to stay married to you. I want to see you grow old. I want to have kids with you. I want to drag you home after days straight at the hospital when you don't want to leave." Mark kisses her again for emphasis. "Okay?"

Nodding, Lexie smiles. "Mark take me to bed."

Unable to keep the smile off his face, Mark lifts her up and takes her into the next room.

The next morning, Lexie wakes up naked and tangled in her husband's arms for the first time in almost a year. While they'd only spent six month apart, they hadn't been together in even longer.

Opening her eyes, she looks at his sleeping form. Trying to make sure she didn't wake him, she looks at the lines on his face. Committing every inch of his face to memory, Lexie absentmindedly runs her hand over his face and through his hair. _Her husband_. For the last several months she hadn't been with him, she'd been apart from him and now she wondered how she possibly managed that. Right here, the entire time, she'd kept herself distanced from him and she wondered how she did that.

"Stop thinking so loud." Mark grumbled not opening his eyes all the way. Lexie almost laughs, she'd forgotten how well he knew her.

Lexie blushes. "You know me, I'm awake, nothing to keep my mind entertained, what else am I supposed to do?" She pushes back on him.

Opening his eyes all the way he smiles and looks at her. "Well I've got a few ideas…" He leers unable to help himself. "Do you have to work today?" Mark asks not even sure of the time of day right now.

"I have today off. A rarity I know, but I don't have to go in today." Lexie's grateful that she doesn't have to go in today. Mark had more flexibility than she did, he could decide to call out with relative ease, while Lexie would be expected at the hospital unless physically able to stand up if she had a shift.

Taking a moment to look around and realize they're still in Mark's hotel, Lexie can't help but realize how ridiculous for two grown, married adults staying in a hotel in the city they lived in seemed.

"Mark" Lexie starts, watching him lift his head. "I love you, but I'm not staying in a hotel. We're adults. So you can stay with me at the frat house while we look, but I'm not staying in here like we're having an affair or like I'm a hooker." She says pointedly. Maybe she doesn't have a lot of room to make demands, but she knew if she never said anything that two years would go by and they wouldn't have made any progress towards a house.

"So let's start looking for somewhere. Together." He says without any hesitation.

"Together." Lexie repeats.

AN: AHHHH! They're reconciled! How exciting! Drop a review and let me know what you thought! PSA over the next few days I'm moving so my posting will be a little more sporadic!


	24. All Things Must Pass

AN: For the next few days I've got a hectic schedule so I'll be a bit out of usual updating. Don't worry though I've got plenty planned for these two.

Since their day off together, Mark and Lexie had spent their downtime looking at any place they could live. So far - the couple liked none of them. If Lexie liked parts of one, Mark hated the other part. If Mark liked something, Lexie found a flaw. Lexie found herself worrying more and more that they would live their lives in Meredith's attic.

Closing her computer, Lexie looked up at Mark. "What if we just found an apartment? Maybe we're just too accustomed to New York and we're not used to a house yet?" She suggests. Their apartment in New York hadn't been large, and even now his hotel room didn't have a lot of space and Lexie lived in Meredith's attic. "Maybe we just start smaller with a condo or an apartment? We don't like any of these houses, and living in my sister's attic is probably pretty weird." She suggests placing her hand on his arm.

Nodding, Mark can't help but agree with her. "I think you're right. We don't like any of these places. There's also only two of us we don't need the space in a house." Although they both liked the idea of the house, he knew the problem. They wanted a place to raise their kids, and none of these houses felt like the right place to do that.

"So let's start there tonight when we're off and see what we can find." Even though it's Mark's office, Lexie had taken to leaving some of her stuff in there when she didn't have room in her locker. Putting her computer in her bag and to the side of the couch, she crosses the room to kiss her husband. "I have to go check on Yang's post-ops. I'll see you tonight." She says before leaving.

"Love you!" He calls as she shuts the door. In the bit of time they'd been fully back together he learned how important it was to tell his wife that he loved her. Lexie had realized the same thing as the two began to slip back into their overly affectionate selves.

Smiling, she swings the door back open. "Love you too!" Lexie returns before shutting the door.

For Meredith, seeing Mark and Lexie like this had come as a bit of a surprise, the first time that she came home and found her sister and her husband sitting on the couch laughing and sitting all entwined, Meredith's eyes almost bugged out of her head. Surprised, Meredith had asked Derek about if he found this normal or just a response to getting back together. Derek laughed, finding that suggestion preposterous having seen Mark and Lexie from day one. This Mark and Lexie, the overly affectionate in private or around close friends, that was the couple he'd known.

Pulling the chart for her patient from the nurses station, Lexie pauses when she notices the date next to the signature from nurse rounds. Everything around her seems to stop for a moment. How could she not realize the date? She wonders.

Meredith, taking notice of Lexie standing too still at the nurses station comes up to her. "You okay Lexie?" She asks gently.

Snapping out of her reverie, Lexie clears her throat as everything comes back into focus around her. "Uhm, yeah, I'm okay. Just didn't realize it had gotten this far into November, that's all." Lexie forces out. Maybe she's not entirely telling the truth right now, but if she really recognizes the date then she's not going to be able to work the rest of the day.

Giving her a look of skepticism, Meredith decides not to push the issue. "Right… anyways I saw Derek and Mark have surgeries that go late. I was thinking of going to Joe's if you wanted to come." She offers.

"Yeah that sounds good." Lexie says still in a bit of a daze before starting to walk towards her patient's room.

Placing herself in front of her Meredith speaks again. "Are you sure that you're okay? Do I need to beat Mark up or something?" She asks not really sure what's going on around her. Whatever had Lexie bothered clearly was upsetting her.

"I'll be okay." Lexie offers by way of explanation. Maybe right now she's not okay, but she will be. Lexie doesn't want to get into all of this at 7 a.m. when she's got hours to go. Going and doing pre-op on the patient, Lexie makes her way to rounds. Staying in the back, Lexie doesn't jump to answer questions like usual, of course Cristina notices.

While Cristina always sent them off to specialties like they she swatted flies around her, Lexie hopes she'll get sent to the pit or somewhere mindless as punishment. "Three something's wrong with you today." Cristina starts and Lexie gulps preparing for a yelling. "You like kids maybe they'll cheer you up or whatever. Go to peds you're on Robbins service." Cristina decides, flicking her hand to show the decision's made.

Feeling her heart sink down her throat, Lexie decides that for once she's going to argue. "Doctor Yang I don't really think that's the best fit today, can I go to the pit instead? Or the clinic?" She asks quickly, hoping that Cristina will have some small bit of mercy in her today.

Raising her eyebrows in shock of the near outburst of her intern. "No. Go to peds." Yang orders again before walking away.

Sighing, Lexie turns towards the pediatrics floor. "Doctor Grey I hear you'll be joining us today." Arizona welcomes her cheerily as ever.

Nodding, Lexie follows. As they go through rounds she manages to keep it together when they're in the older kids rooms. Kids who walk and talk she can pretend they're just small adults. They have personalities that make it easier for her to separate herself.

Before Lexie can realize they've reached the NICU. _Babies_ , her mind reminds her. "Doctor Grey can you present?" Arizona asks handing her the chart.

Trying to stop her shaking Lexie speaks. "Annabella Capernelli, born -" her breath catches in her throat. "Born this morning. She has a heart murmur, you'll be operating this afternoon. Overall she's looking good, just a little jaundiced." Lexie reads and prays that Robbins won't ask her anymore questions. Satisfied, Arizona moves on to speak with the parents. Knowing she's close to losing it, Lexie mumbles something about excusing herself before stepping out of the NICU and into the hallway.

Less than five minutes later, Lexie stands trying to keep her tears at bay only to fail miserably. She waits for Arizona to come out and yell at her, and when Arizona finds her she looks clearly upset. "You want to explain what that was Doctor Grey? Why I turned to talk to the parents and found you running out of the room?" Of all the interns leaving the room crying over a relatively safe procedure, Arizona would not have pegged Lexie for that top.

"I was supposed to become a mom today." Lexie's voice sounds the kind of numb that only comes with immense loss.

At her revalation, Arizona's eyes all but bug out of her head. "Lexie…" Arizona starts reaching a hand out to comfort the younger doctor.

Letting out the shaky breath, she knows she doesn't know Arizona an explanation but at everytime Doctor Robbins had been so kind she couldn't help it. "We found out during my last semester of medical school, I was 11 weeks around graduation. I was going to defer residency for a year so that I could take time to be with the baby without feeling rushed. I made it 11 weeks before I miscarried."

"And today was your due date." It's not a question. Arizona knows, she's spent enough time in peds and around parents to know this look and she doesn't need anymore information.

Although she's given more than enough information she doesn't stop. "I'm sorry I really respect you as a doctor and I tried to get Doctor Yang to switch me off your service, I really did, but she kept telling me I was grumpy and that I liked kids and I really do, but…" Lexie trails off as she gestures.

Nodding, Arizona understands completely. On the day her brother died she always took off from the hospital, struggling to spend the day around children who had the same potential her brother once had. "But she didn't listen and you didn't want to share your information." Again, Arizona doesn't have to ask the question to know the answer.

"Yeah I didn't really want to go into it. I'm sorry I can go to the pit if you'd like me off your service today. That's probably better for both of us." Lexie offers, really knowing what she knows now she wants to leave the hospital, but she wants to get off of Arizona's service. A tiny part of her doesn't want to go home, she liked having something to do.

"Doctor Grey, you're not needed on my service today. Why don't you head home today, if anyone asks I'll just say I didn't need an intern today." Robbins suggests and Lexie feels relief wash over her. Mumbling her thanks, Lexie heads off and away from the peds floor.

A few floors down she turns the corner and sees her husband standing there. From the look on his face she can tell he's realized the date as well. "We were supposed to become parents today." Lexie says sadly as she looks up at her husband.

With a heartbroken sigh, he looks down at his wife. "I cancelled my surgeries for the rest of today." Mark admits sheepishly.

As sad as it is, Lexie almost wants to laugh, he cancelled his surgeries and she'd gotten sent home. "Robbins sent me home. I panicked in the NICU and she told me to take the day. We're quite the pair." If something so horrible hand't happened she would lspend hours laughing at how they both got sent home in basiccally the one hour they spent apart today.

Smirking the Sloan smirk, Mark finally comes up with something they could do today instead of just sitting at home or looking for housing. "Do you want to do something completely irresponsible the rest of the day?" He asked.

In this moment, Lexie can point to milions of reasons as to why she loves him, but his ability to just make the day better as to be one of the best.

"Lead the way Sloan."

AN: And it's extra long because I didn't update yesterday! Thanks for reading and drop me a review!


	25. Wish I

AN: Hi all! Sorry this isn't on my usual schedule - I've been moving and starting a new job so it's been wildly hectic!

Lexie and Mark decide to waste the day. If someone asked them what they'd done during their day off, neither one could give a solid answer but they just spent it together. As the sunsets, Mark and Lexie have decided to ride the ferry boat back and forth across the sound for a little bit. Wrapping his arm around Lexie, Mark pulls him into her.

Despite the fact they had spent the whole day avoiding talking about the reason they took off work, Lexie can't help but think about their future. "Would you -" She pauses to figure out if this is really the right question to ask right now but she wants to get it off her mind. "Would you ever want to try and have a baby again? Not right now obviously, but in the future?" Lexie asks her voice quieter than she means for it to come out as.

The question surprises Mark. Offhandedly they'd discussed it during therapy, but never for real. He wanted kids, even though his childhood had been less than ideal with Lexie he wanted the chance to have kids, and he thought Lexie should be a mom. Without a doubt Lexie would be the best mom, and he knew that, she should get that chance. "I want to." Unlike Lexie, he's never rambled, always quick and blunt with his point.

Her entire face lights up as she turns in his arms to look at him. "Really? Even after everything?" Lexie asks optimistically.

"Yes. God, Lexie you should be a mom. You're going to be an amazing mom. I wouldn't want anyone else to be the mother of my children. I don't think we should rush in and have kids right now that we're just starting to get settled, but at some point, I want to have kids with you." Mark makes sure to emphasize the kids factor. He wanted more than one, growing up around the Shepherds he saw the big family and Mark wanted one of his own.

Mark's admission makes Lexie ecstatic. She worried after losing the baby and everything that happened after that he wouldn't want to take that risk again. Everything he said makes sense though, she knew with how terribleness of the part of his childhood before he met Derek had been that he had worked hard to get to a place where he felt like he could create his own family. "Lexie Sloan, I want to have a family with you." Mark says leaning in and kissing her.

Smiling as he kisses her, Lexie leans back. "I was also thinking about changing my name at work." She admits as they pull away.

This catches Mark off guard, legally she had made Grey a secondary middle name and taken Mark's last name. When coming to Seattle, she wanted to run and had decided to go with her original last name. "What?" He asks in surprise. Of course he wanted her to use her actual name at work.

"I'm thinking of hyphenating it at work, because my last name is Sloan, but I don't want to spend my whole day getting paged for plastics cases. I'm married to you, and I want the world to know." Lexie explains.

"I think I'd like that a lot." Mark admits, he'd never pushed her to change her name but the day she'd decided to he'd been ecstatic.

Smiling she leans into him. "I thought you would. Come on let's go get some dinner." Lexie says as the ferry boat pulls back into the harbor. Pulling his hand she moves them back towards the car they'd driven in.

Even though today should have been one of Lexie's worse days in her life something about it magically feels okay. Parts of her knew she would never fully recover but something about having Mark by her side through all of this and never doubting that he loved her and would be there made it all a little bit easier. Today she should have become a mom. She didn't, but with Mark by her side something that should have been absolutely crippling felt just a little bit easier. As Mark drives them to pick up dinner and head back to the Frat House, she can't help but to look at him admiringly.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" He asks pulling off the ferry and noticing her gaze.

Chuckling, Lexie feels almost like a teenager laughing at this. "No, I just love you and I'm so grateful that I have you today." She speaks earnestly. Mark takes his free hand and wraps it tightly around hers.

There's an unspoken moment between them and Lexie's glad she doesn't have to speak to explain how she loves him and how grateful she is in this moment. Mark's hand tightening around hers gives them both all she needs to know.

AN: I know this is short but it's been crazy! Drop a review and let me know what you thought!


	26. You'll Never Know

AN: Roughly this is hospital merger time (so season 6 episode 3).

"Hey so I think I found the apartment. Want to go tonight since you're off at six?" Mark asks walking up to Lexie in the cafeteria.

Ever since they'd taken the day off work Mark and Lexie had found themselves completely stalled when it came to finding the right apartment. Whereas before the couple stalled due to not finding a house they could see raising a family in, now with the hospital merger looming Mark had a hard time getting Lexie to even leave the hospital.

Shaking her head Lexie looks at the charts in her arms. "I can't. It's the merger, no one's going home and I can't be the first one to leave." Lexie explains.

Carefully, Mark tries to figure out how far he's going to push this. "Right but you've been here for well over 80 hours straight…" He points out trying to see if she'll talk herself into coming home or at least take a few hours and sleep.

Shrugging Lexie reads over the chart again, it's memorized. She has it memorized but she wants to nail it before she goes to her patient. "Power naps and coffee. I've gotta run there's a trauma. Love you." Lexie leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek leaving Mark standing there dazed and confused.

"This ought to end well." He mumbles before getting paged and ending up in an operating room with a pissed off Derek yelling about how the chief had lost his ability to lead.

Rapidly following Derek out of the operating room Mark knows that he needs to stop the neurosurgeon before he says something that gets him fired. While Mark didn't agree with any of the way the chief had handled this, he felt like staying uncharacteristically quiet and doing what he saw as his usual amazing job would help both him and Lexie make it through. In his mind he had no chance of getting fired, and the chief needed him for the revenue both he and his department brought in. With that Lexie had to be safe, Chief Webber had to know that if they fired Lexie it would take Mark a matter of hours to quit.

Mark felt safe in the merger. Chasing Derek down the hall he reaches him by the nurses station. "You're tired, you're angry, you're gonna say something you'll regret. Get out of here for a while, go to the driving range hit a bucket of balls." Mark suggests hoping that getting Derek to leave will make him calm down.

Even if Mark felt mostly comfortable about his position in the merger he didn't want to watch his best friend get fired over his temper. "I have a surgery in an hour." Derek interjects not stopping.

"So take a walk." Mark starts desperately putting himself in Derek's path. "Grab Meredith, take a walk." He suggests again.

Rolling his eyes he looks up at Mark "Meredith won't leave the hospital, none of them will." Derek points out. The residents and interns all but moved into the hospital over the last ten days, Mark could barely count the number of hours he spent with his wife and very few of them had taken place outside the hospital.

Ironically, since Lexie had badgered him to give up his hotel room, Mark had taken to also sleeping at Meredith's. With the merger it had basically grown to just Mark and Derek in the house, occasionally waking up to find a sleeping resident somewhere or hear a door slam as pages went off throughout the house.

"Everyone's waiting on word from up high, look don't tell me Lexie's not worried." Derek points as Mark turns to see his wife running down the hallway with bags of blood in her hands, only to trip and fall on the floor.

Sighing, Mark looks down at his wife and tries to figure out if she'll get mad if he tried to help her. In her refusal to leave the hospital she had also refused to work with him or do anything related to work over fear it would look like special treatment. He knew Lexie was freaked out over all of this. "No Lexie's worried." Mark agrees.

Later in the day he finds Lexie standing by the nurses station charting in a new lab coat and scrubs. It takes everything he has to not tease Lexie about it, and of course he fails miserably at it. "You missed a spot." He points out with a chuckle.

Instantly Lexie turns and begins gesturing. "You can't tease me about the blood thing." She starts fingers pointing at him. "It's not funny and if it gets back to the chief I may as well pack my things." She starts rambling and before it spirals Mark cuts her off.

For a brief moment he wonders how in all of this he became the sane and calm one, talking everyone he knows off the ledge. "You need to stop worrying about the chief, all this is in your head."

Despite his good intentions, Mark's so-called advice ends up with Lexie reciting statistics at him about all of the hospitals who had merged. Even though he knew that he should try and stop her and get her to take a nap or go eat something, he can't help but to smile at the way her memory worked. Mark finally jumps in to stop her. "Okay. Alright. Woah. You have to stop. You deserve to be here, act like it." He reassures her hoping that she really does understand she belongs her. Leaning up, Lexie kisses him, calmed for a moment before taking off down the hallway. "You know, later, after you went home and got some sleep." He calls as she turns down the hallway.

From the blood on her coat, Lexie's day doesn't go up. Her paranoid schizophrenic patient freaks out on her over the lack of her nametag on her substitute lab coat and slams her to the ground. For a moment, Lexie stays put, trying to figure out if getting shoved had hurt her in anyway, she processes that nothing's broken or more than bruised before getting up. Storming off she tries to figure out what had happened that made it so her patient could storm out of the ER.

Paging everyone up the psych chain again, and warning Dr. Bailey the son had taken off Lexie begins searching everywhere she can. Having finished up with his patient, Mark steps into the hallway to see Lexie frantically looking behind bins and other beds.

"You look crazy," He calls hoping to get enough of a rise out of her to calm her down.

What Mark doesn't expect is his petite wife to get in his face and begin yelling at him. "This is your fault!" She starts yelling as loud as she can without being disruptive. "You the one who told me to act like I deserve to be here! And I did! And now I lost a schizophrenic and I am going to be lost unless I find the schizophrenic!" She raises up on her toes to yell at him before turning back down the hallway to keep yelling.

Rather than let her go, Mark continues hoping that he'll calm her down as he watches her crawl behind a bed that clearly would not fit a grown man. "You're not going to find him back there." He says less than helpfully.

Whipping back around Lexie closes the distance again on her husband "You do not get to be charmed by this because this is not charming," she threatens exasperated. In this moment he can finally tell just how little sleep his wife has had and how much this merger had pushed her to the breaking point. "This is me getting cut from the program, this is me having to transfer. You're already amazing. I'm just starting out! What if I can't get another spot in another program? Are we really going to work at different hospitals? No we're not. So I'm going to never get to become a surgeon. I have never stapled a bowl and I have never resected an esophagus. I am not amazing yet." Lexie yells the end and Mark quickly closes the distance.

Placing his hands on her shoulders as she pants, Mark tries to calm her down. "Alright, let's just breathe okay?" He coaches taking dramatized breaths and trying to get her to calm down. Once he's noticed her breathing return to normal he careful speaks again hoping to reason with her. "Look at me. Security is on this. You have become a crazy person I do not recognize, I would like my wife back. Can I get Lexie back?" He says and watches her start to melt in his arms.

The relief lasts only a moment before Lexie hears the schizophrenic and takes off at a dead sprint. They make it just in time to see the man fall down the stairs.

"Dammit." Lexie curses before springing into action.

At the end of his shift Mark listens as Derek talks. "Wait someone slammed Lexie onto the ground?" Mark asks getting a recap from Derek. An hour ago Mark had gotten out of surgery and Derek offered up the details of the surgery currently finishing up in OR 3.

Nodding, Derek continues to explain the parts of the story Bailey told him in a rage before she scrubbed in. "I know that Lexie came up with the plan to get both patients on the table in a way that saved the day, but I know the patient slammed her to the ground." Derek explains and Mark spots his wife sitting downstairs sobbing in her chair.

Mumbling some sort of excuse Mark takes off at a sprint. Watching Lexie try to calm herself before launching into another fit his heart drops in a panic. Webber had cut his wife from the program. "No, are you serious?" Mark starts in disbelief. Even with his biased opinion he knew that Lexie had skills that most of her class didn't. "I'm going to go to the chief…"

Shaking her head, she interrupts him. "I'm safe, I didn't get cut Mark, I'm safe." Lexie explains before launching into another fit of sobs. Wrapping his arms around her, he kisses the top of her head.

"I love you." Mark comforts pulling her closer.

AN: I hope close to 1800 words makes up for my slow posting time! It's the weekend so I'm trying to post a few more chapters! Drop a review and let me know what you thought!


	27. After the Moment

Finally getting Lexie home that evening after baseball with Meredith, Derek, Cristina, and Owen Mark all but carries an exhausted Lexie into the house. The past few days at the hospital clearly weighed heavily on her, and Mark can tell as he guides Lexie towards her room. "We have to stop staying in Meredith's attic." Mark grumbles once they head up the second set of stairs.

"Babe I just want to go to bed, we can argue about this tomorrow." Lexie mumbles. She's completely exhausted and even though she misses having a place that belonged to just them, all Lexie wanted right now was to fall into bed.

Opening the door to the attic she sheds most of her clothes before plopping down into bed. "I have 36 hours off, I'm going in at hour 28. You have until then to find us a place to live or else we live here through the merger. I'm also sleeping for at least six hours." Her eyes are barely open as she makes this decision. If Lexie was honest with herself she knew that even if they moved until the merger ended she would work herself to the bone to make sure she survived.

Even though she felt much calmer now about her chances of surviving the merger than she had while screaming at Mark about being great in the hallway, Lexie still didn't want to put her position at risk.

"So you're saying I have 22 hours to find us an apartment or we're here for the next three months?" He asks borderline surprised at Lexie's decision.

Without missing a beat Lexie shoots back. "More like 20 if you had any plans on getting laid before I go back to the hospital for a few days."

In that moment Mark springs into action, shedding clothes and climbing into bed. "Well in that case…" Mark starts before kissing her. "I'm gonna need more like 25" He adds and Lexie can't help but start laughing.

A few hours later finds Lexie and Mark standing in an apartment reasonably close the hospital. The apartment Mark had suggested yesterday actually turned out seem perfect. "Okay so you were right, and with 18 hours to spare." She admits once the realtor gives them a moment to look at the apartment by themselves. Yesterday when Mark said he'd found the perfect place she'd been skeptical but taking a look around she knew he was right.

Breaking out into a smile, Mark wraps his arms around her. "Are we good to put an offer down?" He asks even though he knows the answer.

Leaning up Lexie kisses him softly. "Let's do it."

"Let me get this straight, in the middle of the merger he got you to not only leave the hospital but agree to buy a place to live and start moving?" Cristina asks leaning back in her chair. As they kept cutting members of Lexie's class she continued to spend more time with the residents a year above her.

Taking a bite of her salad Lexie continues to explain. "We're having movers ship the things we left at our brownstone in New York, we're leaving some of the bigger things there that'll sell when we sell the house, we signed this morning and we pick up keys at the end of the week." Right after they toured the apartment this morning they'd gone through the process of getting the place.

Pondering that for a moment, Cristina leans forward again. "You know men baffle me. Not only did this man follow you across the country, he is willing to do the bulk of the moving so that you live with him, just how good in bed are you Lexie?" Cristina acts and Meredith actually snorts.

Unable to control her laughter Lexie can't stop as she looks at Cristina. "What?"

"I'm just saying that this man moved 3,000 miles for you. You must be a dynamite." Cristina repeats as if she saw everything obviously.

Shaking her head, Lexie drops her fork on the plate. "Yep that's it. Not four years of marriage," She says shoulders still shaking with laughter. Pager going off, Lexie stands up to go answer her page "And for the record, I am _that_ good." Picking up her tray to toss it into the bin, Lexie shakes her head as she walks off.

Looking at her page she realizes she's headed to the chief's office and her heart stops. Freezing in her tracks Lexie's hand flies to her chest in panic. Letting her breath out slowly she tries to steady herself. After a moment Lexie pushes herself forward towards the chief's office. "You wanted to see me Chief?" Lexie asks knocking on the door softly as she pushes it open.

Gesturing to the chair in front of his desk the Richard welcomes Lexie in. "Doctor Grey-Sloan, if you don't mind taking a seat." He starts.

Lexie can feel herself start to panic as Richard tells her to sit. "Well I'll just get right to it," he starts and Lexie can practically feel herself getting fired. "I've been looking over the resident and intern files, and I realized that you've put in twice the hours of the other interns. That's not me rounding that's a fact. By the point of hours you've completed, you've essentially completed your internship in seven months." The chief points out.

By this point Lexie's completely confused, she thought she had gotten called in here to be fired. Remaining silent she continues to listen completely confused. "Right so with this I would like you to sit for your intern examination in two weeks. At this point with the merger we're a little short of where I would like us to be at the residency level, so once you take your exam I'd like to move you up to residency, and then establish a plan to trim off the remaining months so that whatever specialty you choose you can take your boards at the same time as the class above you." Richard finishes and Lexie's face reflects her confusion.

"So you're not firing me? I'm not getting cut?" Lexie asks unable to fully process exactly what she was just offered.

Chuckling softly Richard nods "Alexandra you are the best intern in your class, by far. You do twice the work of any other interns, you remember the names of obscure medical conditions, you diagnose effectively, and between the skills lab and your natural ability you are far above everyone else. I'm not cutting you. I'll confirm with you the exact time but in two weeks on Friday you'll take your exam, and I'll have it graded by Sunday evening so that pending success that Monday you'll start as a resident." Richard stands up and Lexie just nods. He offers his hand and she shakes it.

"Thank you, sir." She says before she exits.

Stepping into the hallway, Lexie's trying to ignore her shock, she's supposed to have five months until residency and now she has 16 days. Wondering if her husband's in his office she makes a turn to check. Opening the door Lexie steps in, to see Mark charting. "So the chief paged me into his office," She starts and Mark's head snaps up.

Watching his eyes go wide with panic, she almost laughs at how alike they are at this moment. "No, Lex-" He starts already calculating in his brain what this means for them.

Putting her hand up she stops him. "I'm not fired. Apparently I've put in twice the amount of hours of everyone in my class. He wants me to take my intern exam in two weeks, and have me catch up to the class ahead of me." She explains still in shock. "I'm going to be a resident."


	28. Flesh and Bone

Lexie had four days until her test. Four. In that time she'd gotten sent home from the hospital to finish studying for her exam she'd taken over the apartment going over every single page of her medical textbooks. Between the move into the new apartment, studying for her exam, and the merger Lexie couldn't wait to finish all of this up. Usually interns transitioning to residency had two full weeks off, since Lexie now had to catch up with the year ahead she wouldn't get time off for a while.

In her abridged time frame for studying the other residents had taken to helping her study at every moment they had available. Even Cristina had given her Torres's legendary flashcards to help. The other interns had effectively stopped speaking to her, of the ones left at the hospital who hadn't gotten cut they decided to stop speaking to her unless it involved medicine.

Flipping through the cards again Lexie mumbles the answers to herself. Running through everything that could possibly bring her to back to this diagnosis she breathes out a content sigh. "You've got this." A voice calls behind her.

Whipping her head around to realize that she's not alone, Lexie sees her husband standing behind her, a box of pizza in one hand and a six pack in the other. "I just really want to be sure, I don't want to be in the exam relying on my photographic memory. Plus with this expedited residency I feel like I can't just pass I have to score above the 90th percentile." Lexie explains gesturing around her with all the notes.

Shaking his head, Mark knows his wife got like this around tests. He remembers when he had asked her to marry him in a similar setting. "I know, but babe you've got this. And you've got four days, so now you're going to take a break, we're gonna eat pizza, drink some beer, and then we're gonna go to sleep." He coaxes gently.

Setting her notes down Lexie turns herself all the way around to look at him. "What kind of pizza?" She asks and Mark can't help but laugh.

Now he knows he's got her distracted for at least a few hours. "It's cheese. Your favorite." Mark lifts the top of the box to prove his point.

"My hero," Lexie teases getting up to kiss him hello. Taking the pizza from his hand she sets it down so she can kiss him properly. "Hi. I missed you today." She wraps her arms around him and stays pressed against him for a moment.

Kissing her back he wraps his arms around her. "I missed you too. Sick of all the textbooks yet?" He steps away to grab the food and sit down.

Shaking her head she plops down on the couch. "Just about ready to be done with this." Lexie places the box between them and hands a beer to Mark before taking one for herself.

Pulling her piece of pizza Lexie looks at Mark with a smile on her face. It'd been a long time since they had a night like this and she could honestly say even with the exam looming over her shoulders she felt lighter than she'd felt in so long. Finishing her first slice she looks over at him, a smile on her face. "What?" Mark asks confused.

"I'm just really happy. I know I'm worried about the exam and it's stressful obviously, but I'm happy that you're here and that we're us again. I'm just really happy." Lexie admits. The two spend the rest of the meal talking and laughing.

Finishing her beer, Lexie moves her bottle to the table and drops the empty pizza box to the floor. Crawling across the couch, she places her head on his chest. Wrapping her arms around him, she sighs content. Neither one has to say anything as they just lay there together, Mark's hands absentmindedly run through her hair. "It was hopeless after all." Lexie mumbles.

Quirking his eyebrow, Mark tilts his head. "It was hopeless?" He repeats confused by her musings.

"Trying to be apart from you. I'm so much happier with you." Lexie explains further. Sitting up she notices Mark's protest as she removes herself from him. "Come on Mr. Sloan, take me to bed." Her head gestures towards their bedroom.

Breaking out into a smile Mark sits up the rest of the way. "Gladly." Sliding his hands under her, Mark lifts Lexie up and takes them both to their bedroom.

Four days later finds Lexie double checking her pencils one more time outside the exam room. Bouncing her leg up and down she tries to keep herself calm. Reaching over, Mark places his hand on her knee. "You're going to do great. Really. You've studied, you're amazing. I'm so proud of you." He kisses her quickly for emphasis.

A beeping interrupts them and of course it belongs to Mark. "I have to go. I'm needed in the pit, I'm off before your exam is done so I'll see you at home?" He questions and she nods.

At that moment Richard opens the door and ushers Lexie in to begin her exam. Running off across the hospital it doesn't matter what speed Mark gets there at, the guy flatlined in the ambulance and they couldn't revive him. Turning around he decides to just head home, there's less than half an hour left on his shift and he's been here all night, heading home won't make that big of a difference.

Changing in his office, he heads out to his car. Getting in, Mark checks all his mirrors before pulling out of the parking. Less than a mile away, he sits at a red light. The light flicks to green, looking both ways Mark goes forward. Missing the car that barrels through two red lights he never sees the truck until it crashes into his car.

Mark loses consciousness instantly.

Fifteen minutes later ambulances lights and sirens flicker into the ambulance bay of Seattle Grace Mercy West. With the injuries called in both Derek and Bailey have positioned themselves waiting. The doors open and Derek freezes as the bed is unloaded. "Prep Trauma One now!" Bailey yells pointing angrily at the first trauma room.

Meredith stands frozen. "But that's… and she's upstairs…" Meredith stutters wildly looking at the bed.

"Focus Dr. Grey or go get me someone who can." Bailey has taken over control of the situation. Carefully the trio wheels him into Trauma Room 1.

Finally snapping himself back into action, Derek makes a judgment call. "No one tell Doctor Grey-Sloan, I want her to finish her exam and then when she's done someone wait outside to tell her." Derek orders as he begins the exam. Mark's heart rate keeps jumping around and it's making Derek nervous. "We need to work fast and we need to work quickly. I want to stabilize him so we can get scans." Shepherd wants to leave, he wants to stop acting as Mark's doctor and run away, but he can't.

For forty-five minutes, they try to start stabilizing him. Just as they've started to get him stable enough to move to scans, Meredith realizes Lexie's exam finished. "I need to go update his wife." She says trying to excuse herself from the situation. Getting dismissed from the room, Meredith all but runs there trying to stop anyone from getting to her little sister first.

Just as Meredith gets there, the door opens. Lexie's on a high, she's sure that she scored close to where she wants, and she feels genuinely good about her shots. In her mind, nothing could bring her down.

As time is called she turns in her exam and goes to exit the room. Stepping out she spotted her sister "I killed it. I don't want to brag, but I crushed that exam. I'm going to be a resident." Lexie says proudly.

With a heavy sigh, Meredith speaks. "Lexie - there's been an accident."

AN: well well, it would seem that our couple wasn't totally out of the woods. Sorry that it wasn't on my usual schedule! Review and let me know what you thought!


	29. Crash Into Me

_As time is called she turns in her exam and goes to exit the room. Stepping out she spotted her sister "I killed it. I don't want to brag, but I crushed that exam. I'm going to be a resident." Lexie says proudly._

 _With a heavy sigh, Meredith speaks. "Lexie - there's been an accident."_

In some ways Lexie's spent the last few months expecting this. Her father had drank himself into oblivion to the point of hurting her, she knew deep down that Thatcher Grey would always hurt himself and someone else. "How bad is it?" She asks with a calmness that would almost come across as cold if she hadn't spent the last few months mentally preparing herself for this moment.

Cautiously, Meredith begins to explain. Lexie in a situation involving Mark in danger was a new experience to Meredith, and she wondered if Lexie really did just know how to to internalize everything to avoid completely panicking. "He's touch and go right now, Derek's trying to stabilize him right now. You should probably come to the pit." Knowing Lexie, Meredith struggles to understand the reaction she's witnessing. Part of her just assumes that seeing Mark in danger will cause a stark shift in he demeanor.

Nodding, Lexie processes all of this information still not realizing Meredith's talking about her husband not her father. "Let me guess the cops need me to explain Dad's drinking and I'm needed downstairs because he hurt someone." She concludes not seeing any other possible option.

With an inhale, Meredith shakes her head slowly. In this moment she understands Lexie's calm, Lexie assumed Thatcher had gotten in an accident, not Mark. "Lexie…" Meredith starts again, "Thatcher didn't get into an accident."

Before Meredith can keep going Lexie cuts her off. "Then who?" The instant the question falls from her lips Lexie realizes exactly why Meredith's here waiting for her. The words "touch and go" from moments ago ring loudly in her mind. "No." She shakes her head as tears fill her eyes. "He can't be, he's supposed to be at home. I'm supposed to go home and meet him." The fact Lexie's standing is a pure miracle, but somehow she is.

"He's in Trauma room 1. Derek's with him, someone ran a red light. Derek and Bailey are trying to get him stable enough for scans before they take him to the operating room, Lexie you need to come now." Meredith explains. Her pager goes off with Mark's new location. "He's stable and in CT," she updates.

Nodding Lexie can't ignore the feeling that she's shaking uncontrollably. She tries to move her legs forward, only to find herself frozen in place. Shaking her head Lexie places her trembling hand on her chest to try and steady herself. "I can't. He can't." She stutters.

Always calm in a crisis Meredith takes a step forward. For a moment she finds herself surprised by her own sisterly attitude. Even though she grew up as an only child, Meredith can't help but admit she likes having a little sister and didn't want to see her hurting. "I know." She takes Lexie's hand in her own. "But you want to see him. Even if it's bad, you want to see him. I'll stay with you the whole time." Meredith promises.

Silent the entire way, Lexie follows Meredith. Normally they wouldn't let wives back here, but she has medical privileges in the hospital. Lexie moves into the CT scan booth quickly, placing herself behind Derek. Mark's in the other room but before Lexie looks at him she want the medical information first. Once the scans pop up Lexie leans against the back of the wall. "That's a big bleed. In the frontal lobe. I can see it from back here." Lexie's voice stays monotone as she regurgitates what she sees.

In her mind Lexie doesn't understand how all of this could happen. They spent months working together to make their relationship work, and now he laid in a hospital bed. In moments like this she wishes she could shut her brain down, make it so she didn't know that the frontal lobe controlled behavior and personality. Her husband could be gone. Everything that made Mark, _Mark_ could have disappeared.

That thought alone made her want to go to Joe's and never move herself from the bar bench.

"I'll go in from the side, clear the bleed, relieve the pressure. He'll stay in the ICU for at least a week and we'll have someone watching his intracranial pressure consistently for the first 72 hours. I can get this." Derek doesn't like to make promises, but this is as close as he'll get. After watching the two of them struggle for months, Derek doesn't want to watch it end like this.

Even knowing the low chances Mark has Lexie nods. "Where do I sign?" She knows they need a consent form and if Derek says he can do it she knows it's the best chance. "Do whatever you can, I want to take my husband home. Don't make me a widow Derek please." Lexie pleads. In this moment she's not speaking to her superior, or her sister's boyfriend, she's asking the guy who stood next to Mark while she walked down the aisle. She's asking the guy who called her two hours after Mark dumped her to warn her that chances were high Mark would come around the next afternoon to apologize for acting like a jerk.

Nodding Derek knows he needs to still cover all the bases. "Lexie based on where this bleed is and his other injuries there's a chance" Before he can even finish Lexie cuts him off.

"There's a chance he could not wake up or that even if he does he could need round the clock care or he could be perfectly fine but every trace of his personality could be gone. I know. I also know that if you don't operate he's going to keep bleeding into his brain and he will die." Lexie's voice trembles as she speaks thinking of all these options and what they could do to Mark. "I know the risks and I know what his chances are. Derek go ahead and operate." She all but pleads with Derek.

Calling down to the OR, Derek warns them they're coming. The orderly begins moving Mark back onto the gurney. Moving from the booth to Mark's bedside, Lexie takes the briefest of moments with him. "I love you," she whispers to his unconscious form, a hand running through his hair. She tries not to take notice of the bruises and cuts on his face. "Please come back to me." She pleads, unable to kiss him because he's been intubated she presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Lexie I'm going to take him down to the OR now." Derek says entering the room.

Hesitantly, Lexie takes her hand off the gurney. Watching Derek wheel her husband away Lexie steps into the hallway. Leaning against the wall she watches Derek continue to head down the hallway, tears in her eyes. All she wants is for Mark to be okay. She wants to take her husband home and not wonder if she'll get Mark back. "It took us so long to get back together. We wasted so much time." Lexie says wiping at her eyes as Meredith stands next to her in the hallway. "I can't lose him."

Meredith doesn't say anything, just runs her hand up and down Lexie's arm.

AN: Oh no! review and let me know what you thought!


	30. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

AN: Wow can you believe! 30 chapters already!

"What is she doing? Still pacing?" Cristina asks plopping down next to Meredith. Two hours into Mark's surgery and Lexie hadn't done anything other than pace. For a stress eater, Lexie hadn't taken a single bite of anything, she just kept pacing.

Watching the situation in front of her unfold Meredith didn't know what step to take next. "We've got about six hours left. She hasn't cried since we moved into the waiting room, she just keeps pacing." She's baffled by Lexie's response.

Shaking her head Cristina stands up. "No we're not going to do this for hours." Even though Cristina hated basically everyone besides Meredith, she didn't hate Lexie. Grabbing Lexie by the arm she stops the pacing intern in her tracks. "Listen to me. You're little Grey. Good things happen to you. Shepherd is good, this is Sloan's best shot. If things go badly you will be okay. You are strong. Things will be fine. But. Stop. Pacing. You're making me dizzy." Cristina drops her hands off Lexie and sits back down in her chair.

Trying to process everything, Lexie drops in a chair across from the two residents. Mind and body numb, Lexie feels completely exhausted. "Everytime something good happens, something bad happens almost instantly." She doesn't need to go through everything awful she's witnessed, but it feels like everytime she takes a small step forward she gets forcibly shoved back. "My internship was supposed to end this morning, I was supposed to go home and spend time with my husband."

"And bone like rabbits." Cristina jumps in. Turning her head to look at her, Lexie can't help but start laughing.

Meredith jumps in first. "Cristina!" She admonishes.

Meanwhile Lexie can't stop laughing. "That's so wildly inappropriate. It's not incorrect, but so inappropriate." The three break out into laughter.

A voice interrupts them. "Lexie," Derek starts and the three instantly stop laughing. Turning around she stands to face him.

Years worth of birthdays, late nights, and early mornings run through Lexie's mind. She sees Mark on their wedding day, on both of her graduations, on holidays and every day in between. If Derek's telling her that he lost Mark on the table Lexie doesn't know what she'll do next.

Standing still, Lexie inadvertently holds her breath as Derek closes the distance. "He's okay. They're moving him into the neuro-ICU right now. The bleed was a lot smaller than it looked, it'll be a bit until we know for sure, but it looks good." Derek explains and Lexie can feel the relief rush through her.

"When - when can I see him?" She asks knowing that she won't fully believe he's okay until she lays her eyes on him. Even though she knows the usual rules on loved ones and visitors, Lexie hopes with her privileges in the hospital they'll let her see him earlier than they usually would.

Hesitantly - Derek speaks. "Usually we try to wait until the patient's completely settled," He starts and watches Lexie's shoulder's drop. "Since you've finished your internship I think we can trust that you're not going to get in the way. If you want to follow me," He gestures and Lexie follows.

The walk down the hallway feels longer than anything she's ever felt. Getting into the elevator Lexie leans back against the wall. What she would give to be anywhere but here right now, to have Mark anywhere but in the hospital bed he's currently occupied. Trying to fight back any tears, Derek looks over to see Lexie just about to cry. "Hey, we got it. I'm that good." Derek jokes trying to cheer Lexie up a little bit.

Tearily laughing she turns her head to look at him. "That's a Mark joke. He's always off spouting about how he's the greatest surgeon to walk this planet." Lexie can't help but think about the one time Mark stitched her up after she'd cut her arm. A knife slipped out of her hand, caught her arm, and Mark had rushed right in to fix it making jokes the entire time about how lucky she was to live with the world's greatest surgeon.

"Yeah well, I can't let him get all the credit." Derek leads them down the hall and outside Mark's room. "He's in here, in an hour I'd like to extubate him so I'll be back to check his oxygen levels. I'll also be monitoring him every hour for the next 24 hours, even when he wakes up. I'll give you some time with him now, but I'll be out here if you need anything." Derek opens the door to the room and gives Lexie her space.

Taking a step into the room Lexie tries to keep herself under control. In all the scenarios she'd run through her mind she had never imagined this. "So you ride that motorcycle for years on end with no accidents and driving home from work you get hit in your car? What kind of crap is that Sloan?" He's unresponsive but she sits down and takes his hand anyways. "I beg you to get rid of that stupid bike for years, Derek crashes you don't get rid of it, you move here and get rid of it, only to end up in an accident. This really doesn't help to prove your point the bike is safe." Laughing hollowly, she tries desperately to keep it together.

"You're supposed to be the strong one. You're always going around telling me how you're the greatest surgeon known to Earth." Lexie tries to keep it together and she's grateful she's alone. While medicine debated the benefits of talking to a comatose patient, she firmly believed talking to any unconscious patient gave them a better shot. With her husband, she wasn't going to take any chances. Desperate, she would do anything to get him just awake at this point. "So if you're so great and going to be the strong one then you should really wake up now. Just wake up and make some snide comment about how you're actually the greatest and not even a car can take you down." She pleads with his sleeping form.

Waiting for him to wake up, Lexie sits there, rambling and holding his hand. Just waiting for any sort of movement.

AN: Mark's not quite out of the woods… review and let me know what you thought!


	31. Wake Up

Despite Lexie's best efforts to stay awake, the day catches up with her and she falls asleep draped over Mark's bed. Only briefly does she wake as Derek removes the intubation tube and comments that Mark's breathing over the ventilator before falling back asleep. The smallest twitch of movement wakes her hours later. At first Lexie thinks she's imagined the movement, snapping her head up to look at him, she waits a moment before laying back down.

Before her head can make it back down to the bed, a groan slips out of Mark's lips. Jolting upright she delicately places her hand on his face. "Mark?" She tries softly to no avail. "Mark I'm right here. Can you open your eyes and say something? Anything?" Lexie pleads her voice gaining a little volume.

After what feels like a dozen years Mark's eyes shoot open. At first he looks panicked and confused, Lexie can tell he's disoriented. Avoiding his lines she moves herself onto the bed and places both hands on the sides of his face. "I know it hurts. You were in an accident. It turns out Derek's as good of a surgeon as he says." She rambles uncontrollably and hopes that it's enough to give his mind time to re-orient itself.

Processing, Mark blinks a few times and Lexie waits desperately to hear him speak. "I'm still a better surgeon than he is." Mark grumbles and Lexie laughs her eyes filling with happy tears.

"Yes you are. I love you." She agrees. Closing the distance she kisses him softly.

Every inch of Mark's body aches, he mostly remembers the accident but things got a little fuzzy after the impact. "What happened?" He asks clearing his throat. Still disoriented Mark needs a little more explanation of what happened.

With a measured breath she speaks slowly. "You were in a car accident. The police said someone ran a red light and t-boned you. You had a pretty big subdural hematoma, Derek operated, you've got some other minor injuries so you won't be running around for a little bit. You'll be here for a little bit, but you're okay. You'll be okay." Lexie explains not taking her hands off of him the entire time she speaks.

"That's good." He's breathing harder enough than usual to tell that he definitely had some damage to his lungs. "I love you." Mark says softly, taking one of her wandering hands in his own.

Tightly gripping his hand she relishes in the warmth in his hand. He's alive. A few hours ago Lexie had thought she would lose him. Now he's here and he's okay. "I love you too." She reaffirms.

Neither says anything, they just sit together. It doesn't take long for Mark to fall back asleep and Lexie to do the same, now lightened in a way she hadn't since Meredith told her there'd been an accident.

AN: I know this is very very short but I had to wake Mark up! Review and let me know what you thought.


	32. Surround Me

AN: I know it's been a minute, but here's the next chapter.

Lexie wakes up sore, she's spent the majority of the last two days sleeping in a chair in the ICU. Even though Mark had told her to go home several times yesterday, Lexie doesn't want to risk it. Sitting up she rolls her neck and shoulders, trying to stifle her groan as her joints crack and pop.

Since waking up Mark had slept on and off. From the patient side of the hospital, Lexie had to admit that getting woken up every single hour did not make it relaxing to heal. It would still be days until she could take Mark home, but hopefully Derek would move him out of the ICU and Mark could get a little more rest.

The last few days had felt like an emotional rollercoaster, from her exam to Mark getting in the accident, and Lexie felt wiped. She wanted to take Mark home and crawl into bed and forget about everything else happening for a little bit. Since Mark had woken up Lexie had done everything in her power to keep her emotions in check and focus on him, not her feelings. A few tears escape as the past few days wash over her and Lexie quickly wipes her eyes, trying to calm herself.

Quickly once one tear falls, tears rapidly begin to fall down her face. Trying to wipe them, Lexie does everything she can avoid waking her husband up. Somehow it feels like the last forty eight hours had come down on her at once.

Despite her attempts to keep quiet, Mark comes into consciousness again to notice his wife only inches from sobbing. 'Hey what's wrong?" He asks moving his good arm to rub at his eyes.

Instantly Lexie jumps up, wiping at her face. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to wake you up. Nothing's wrong I'm just tired." She's lying, and not well, but she doesn't want to to stress Mark out when he's supposed to be healing.

Not buying it for even a moment Mark shakes his head. "Clearly something's bothering you or you wouldn't be crying. What's wrong Lex?" He asks again, leaving little room for her to talk her way out of this.

"I just… the last few days caught up with me and how close I came to losing you. Mark we wasted so much time being mad and angry at each other. I should have told you where I was sooner or not have left. I'm so sorry." She apologizes.

Reaching out Mark takes her free hand in his."I'm not going to say that I loved everything that happened in the last year, but we're okay. We're here, and I'm a little worse for wear, but really babe it's okay. I'm not going anywhere." He promises to his tearful wife.

Nodding Lexie tries to calm herself down. Mark's here. He's okay. Derek was good at his job. Lexie wouldn't go home a widow. "I'm so glad you're okay." She repeats tightening her grip on his hand.

A knock on the door interrupts them and Lexie quickly removes all traces of her tear before turning to face whoever walked in.

"Sorry to interrupt, I want to take Mark for a CT scan to check on how the bleed is healing." Derek lets himself into the room and pulls the chart off the end of Mark's bed. Making note of how Mark's stats had reacted over the last 48 hours. "It'll take just a few minutes then I'll have him back." Derek promises. As they wheel Mark away it takes everything Lexie has to not take off after them.

Watching Mark and Derek head down the hallway Lexie realizes she needs to something to do while he gets his scan. Still too anxious to eat, she decides to take a shower. Walking towards the locker room she's about to step inside when the Chief stops her. "Oh Doctor Grey-Sloan, I've been looking for you. Your intern exam results are in. If you'd like to take a look, I think you'll be pleased." He hands her the envelope and stands there.

Slowly, Lexie opens the envelope wishing she could have Mark standing by her. In her mind, when she'd originally toeen a spot in a residency program she'd expected to go through all of this in Manhattan. She'd thought she would go through residency at the hospital where Mark had worked, they'd maybe have the pitter-pattering of little feet around the apartment.

Never had Lexie thought she would come back to Seattle. She couldn't of imagined almost ending her marriage and taking off to return to the West coast. Everything in the last year had changed her. While she had spent the last eight years sure she would never move out of Manhattan, or at least further than Long Island, here she was with her husband in Seattle.

Life had changed.

Even with everything terrible having happened in the last two days, and the terrible parts of the last year, Lexie's happy she came to Seattle. Her marriage felt stronger, it didn't feel like she had to run anymore. Than man she met at 18 was still her perfect choice, and Lexie couldn't imagine a day without him anymore.

Unfolding the paper in her hands, she scans to find the score.

 _100%._

A perfect score.

After every piece of crap Lexie had suffered this year, she survived.

"Seattle Grace's first perfect score in the last five years. Good job Doctor Grey-Sloan, once your husband is more stable and back at home for a bit we'll look forward to having you join our residency program. Congratulations." Richard says encouragingly before walking away leaving Lexie standing there stunned.

45 minutes and a shower later finds Lexie walking back in Mark's ICU room to find Derek settling him back in. "It looked good." Derek starts. "The swelling is going down in a way that I like, I'll feel comfortable moving him to a regular room in a few hours. And nice job Little Grey. I heard you did an excellent job on your exam."

Blushing Lexie smirks a little before shooing Derek out of the room. "Nice job?" Mark asks confused.

"I got a perfect score on my intern exam. The chief just told me when I went to go take a shower." Lexie explains sheepishly. Usually she'd jump up and down celebrating but she didn't want to put the focus on her right now.

Bursting out a smile Mark sits up as much as he can. "Babe that's awesome! I'm so proud of you. You kicked ass," Mark's excitement knows no bounds. After the year that they'd had Lexie deserved the perfect score. In his opinion she deserved to score the highest and do the best in her class.

Leaning in, Lexie presses a kiss on his mouth softly.

Everything would be okay.

AN: And that's chapter 32. So I'm debating ending it there and maybe writing an epilogue or leaving room for a sequel, or just continuing onward. Let me know what you think!


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